Gone

My first instinct was to go backwards, but Legolas stopped me. His hand between my shoulder blades showed me that going back was not an option. It was only when I turned my head slightly to the left that I realized why: the mercenaries had come. They were blocking the exit and locked us in the tomb chamber with Maglor.

"Where are the dwarves?" Beleg asked. "You can't have sneaked past them."

There was something about Maglor's gaze that I had already seen in it, but which he had probably managed to hide well when he had tried to make me believe that he was on my side. And the glint I saw in them now scared me. "Do you really think I haven't made use of all the time I've spent wandering Middle Earth?"

He pushed himself away from the tomb and slowly approached us. In turn, his henchmen at our backs pushed us onward. "Ever since my brother threw the Silmaril into the abyss, I've been searching for it. But it wasn't until the dwarves carved it out of the mountain, many centuries later, that I had some hope. Yet they guarded it better than even my father could have, made it an heirloom of their kin and carried it to Ered Mithrin, a fortress I would never have gained access to. Then, when it had finally found its way back to Erebor, Smaug invaded the mountain and made it even more impossible to get it into my keeping. After his death I could have brought it to me, but why give up the protection of the dwarves when I had not yet found his brother, the second Silmaril, which I gave to the sea out of my own weakness?" He paused. "No. I was waiting for the time to come."

"The time to come?" I repeated. I had to keep him talking, maybe then there would be a chance to escape, although it looked anything but promising. How the hell had Maglor managed to slip his mercenaries past the dwarves and get here before we did? Or was that not what had happened?

"Of course. I was aware that Morgoth would not remain idle. All I had to do was follow in the footsteps of his henchmen. That these fools would actually manage to destroy the Silmaril – I never expected that. But they paid for what they did." The smile that played around Maglor's mouth did not reach his eyes and reminded me strikingly of Morgoth. Both were obsessed with the Silmaril. Maglor just in a different way than the latter. "It took me precious time, but it trickled like water through my fingers anyway – the handful of years I spent waiting for you, Aspen, didn't matter in the grand scheme of things."

"You knew I was coming?"

"Oh no." He shook his head gently. "Not you in particular. But I knew the Valar would have to do something to rein in Morgoth's attempts to free himself. They couldn't take on the task themselves, so I stayed and watched."

"Why didn't you keep all the shards?" Legolas intervened. "Why did you allow them to be scattered?"

Maglor hissed and gave the elf a hard look. Instinctively, I reached for Legolas' hand again, intertwining my fingers tightly with his. Why was he provoking Maglor? Was he trying to kill us?

"The Valar were faster than me. They were there before I could collect the fragments of the Silmaril and tried to carry out their little plan with them – to no avail so far."

"What do you mean?"

"Aspen isn't the first person they've dragged back in time, as if only the secondborn are capable of making whole what's broken." His voice sounded dismissive, which annoyed me. But I was smart enough not to say a thing. "They tried many times, in many different ways. Yes, there were only three parts to be reunited, but the task had to be accepted of one's own free will. A pure heart that would be aware of its obligation." He looked over at me, but I glanced away. His words had hit me in a way that I couldn't quite grasp. Because they meant that the Valar must have tried many times to entrust a human such as myself with this task, but I had been the only one to put my personal interests aside in order to help the Valar and ultimately the world. That spoke volumes.

"So they took the shards back from the humans if they didn't complete the task?" I asked. I didn't want to admit it, but Maglor had captivated me with his story. Not that I could forget the danger he posed. Nevertheless, I wanted to know more because it shed light on what had happened to me. Why it had happened to me.

"No." Maglor again looked over my head at the wall with contempt. "Once they were given the task, the shard stayed with them for as long as they lived, and in some cases beyond. It was up to them to recognize their path and follow it. The Valar were not allowed to help them, otherwise they would have compromised their own goal."

"But no one found it."

"Some got ahead of others. But no one showed such... devotion as you did. As little as I understand the Valar's love for you mortals, your perseverance is unsurpassed."

Wonderful. He wasn't the first to lecture me about my stubbornness, but he was the first to compliment me on it. If I had settled into my new life like the others had, none of this would have happened. But would I have met Legolas then? Would I have entered into a bond with him? No. I would have spent a lifetime wondering why this had happened to me and would have died in the end without an answer. Like the woman in Lake Town or the old woman from Rohan who only had a few years left to live. As dangerous as the situation was, Maglor had given me an answer that I had been looking for for a long time. I was nothing special. Not a chosen one. Just someone who refused to give up. And wasn't that the thing that made the difference in most situations, not just mine?

One question was still on the tip of my tongue: "Were all time travelers assigned the same task?" After all, I had found more than one reference to time travelers like me. Had they all been related to the Silmaril shards?

Maglor frowned briefly before saying, "I do not know. But ultimately, it isn't of any relevance. The Valar play with the strands of time when it suits them. We are all but a moment in it. Even us elves." He seemed to ponder his own words before adding, "But none of that matters now, Aspen. You are here, and I too found my way through the tunnels I once made, one of which your friend the dwarf discovered. Everything falls into place, doesn't it?"

The history lesson was over. Maglor was ready to get down to business. So my body tensed almost automatically and I pushed aside the many other questions I could have asked. "What do you want to do with the Silmaril, should I be able to put it back together?"

"That need not be of interest to you," he said rather bold. "I suggest we start before the dwarves have cleared away the debris to their crypt. This is in everyone's interest."

Legolas' hand tightened around mine. I knew what he was trying to tell me. That's why I nodded barely perceptible. It was important to keep up the façade for as long as possible. After all, I really wanted to learn something from Maglor, because I had no idea how I was going to complete this task without his help. However, it was essential that I did – even if our own plan had actually called for something else. So I stepped forward.

Gimli leapt as soon as he noticed my movement and raised his axe. "No, lass."

"It's all right, Gimli."

The dwarf let out a snort. "Nothing is all right at all. I won't let that traitor hurt you."

Gimli was a loyal soul and I had taken him into my heart for that. And even more so for how damn cunning he could be sometimes. His poker face was unmatched, as it was now. He did what we had agreed upon without letting the slightest thing show.

The dwarf seemed reluctant to listen to me, but eventually he let me step up to the tomb next to Maglor. The Arkenstone, the second Silmaril, lay on it like a glittering jewel. I could understand why the dwarves had cherished it like life itself, it looked beautiful. But in a dangerous way. Because the closer I got, the more clearly I sensed its inherent power.

"Put the shards on the lid," Maglor said. "All around the Silmaril."

Without hesitation, I reached into my pocket and pulled out the pouch Legolas had given me in the cave. My heart was beating so fast that I thought it would jump out of my throat. Maglor must have noticed my anxiety, but hopefully he drew the wrong conclusions.

With trembling fingers, I opened the pouch and arranged the shards around the Arkenstone. They looked strikingly real. Maglor stood next to me, his attention on me, not on the shards. The others didn't make a sound.

"What do I have to do?"

"You are the catalyst and the connecting piece all in one," Maglor explained. "You have to create a bridge between the Silmaril and the shards."

"How?"

"Hold out your hand. Can you feel the energy?"

I hesitantly followed his command. Through my fear and anxiety, I found it difficult to focus on anything other than my own feelings. But I had to push them to the back of my mind or I wouldn't be able to complete my task. It took me two attempts to calm the chaos in my head enough to be able to focus on the Silmaril. And indeed! I could feel its energy. It vibrated around us like a living organism. So powerful that I flinched in shock.

"You sensed it," Maglor said. "I knew you were the right person."

If only he knew. But I wouldn't do hell telling him the shards weren't the real ones. I had to keep Maglor distracted to give Legolas and the others time to attack. If he was completely centered on me, they would overpower him and the mercenaries. I hadn't been able to count how many there were, but I trusted Gimli, Legolas and Beleg. If any of them asked me, I would put my life in their hands.

"Now reach for it. Draw the energy to the shards." Maglor's voice sounded eager, and a quick glance at him told me the time had come. He was so desperate to see the Silmaril whole again that he wasn't paying attention to anything but me and my hand, which was hovering over the stones. The moment I did as he said and reached for the energy of the intact Silmaril with all my mind, chaos erupted at my back. But I couldn't think about it because I was now connected to the Silmaril and could feel its energy flowing through me. Slowly at first, then ever more strongly, like a river that had found a turning. Or like a conductor directing lightning into the earth. Only in this case, the earth was the fake shards.

The sounds of battle that occasionally made their way through the noise that surrounded me told me that my friends were doing their best. Maglor couldn't stop them by threatening me, because that would mean I'd lose the connection and this was the last thing he wanted. I heard him curse as he realized that we had tricked him, but he could not yet see the true extent of it. For while Legolas, Gimli, Beleg and I had climbed through the mountain landscape in search of the entrance, we had made two plans: There were only two possible endings to this story – either I had to assemble the Silmaril without Maglor, or with him. The latter presented us with greater challenges than the former, but we were prepared for both options – in a way. And the plan in which we hadn't been able to shake off Maglor was for me to channel some of the intact Silmaril's energy into the fake shards. That would destroy the fakes and make Maglor believe that I had failed. That it wasn't possible to reassemble the Silmaril. Then, when we got rid of him, I would try again – with the real shards. We were aware that this left a lot of room for the unforeseen, but we had not been able to think of anything better in the short span of time. Heavens, that we had even anticipated Maglor catching up with us before we reached the entrance was a miracle. He had tricked us. Suspecting or knowing that we sensed something was wrong with him, he had let us go – trusting that we would do the work for him and walk straight into the trap without his intervention. I didn't blame Gimli for not knowing about the other tunnels. None of us could have guessed that Maglor had this ace up his sleeve. But in retrospect, it made sense: Smaug had been lying on the treasure for many years, guarding it. And Maglor had had just as long to dig into the mountain to find a way to get the Arkenstone.

"No!" Maglor's voice sounded so far away, as if he was in another universe. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him jump down and join the fight. But I couldn't turn around to see who had the upper hand. Holding the energy required all my attention. I could already feel how it was draining me. Like a rope that was stretched too tight. But I had to hold on. Just a little longer.

Just a little longer.

Just a little longer.

I repeated the phrase in my head over and over again, yet a groan escaped my lips. With my eyes closed, I continued to hold on, almost putting myself in a Zen state. It was just me and the energy. Nothing else.

At least that's what I thought. But I was so wrong.

"What a wonderful coincidence that Fëanor's son, of all people, would open the door for me," said a voice in my head and I knew I had lost. "He's never had a sense of when to act."

"Morgoth," I said with some effort. I knew that the others couldn't help me and that I couldn't ask Maglor for help either. It was too late for that now. Morgoth and I had to sort it out on our own.

"Oh, but of course. I didn't want to miss out on this spectacle. I knew he wouldn't be able to control his desires, just like his father."

"What do you want?" I found it increasingly difficult to focus on the Silmaril.

"I'm watching your little charade. A truly marvelous move, forging the shards. This idea could have been mine."

I wanted to put my hands around his neck, because of course Legolas had not come up with this idea to help Morgoth, but to protect me. Morgoth must have sensed the anger, which further distracted me from my task, because I heard his voice laughing softly. "It was the elf's idea? That makes it even better!"

His words made me so upset that I almost screamed. He had to get out of my head. Now! But by the time I realized that distracting me was exactly Morgoth's goal, it was already too late. The energy was beginning to slip away from me and I no longer knew if I was channeling it back into the intact stone, into the counterfeits, or if it was breaking free. If the latter happened, I couldn't guarantee anything.

"Let go of the connection!" That was Maglor's voice, not half as real as Morgoth's laughter, growing louder and louder in my head. I just couldn't push him away. He had gained access to me when I hadn't been paying attention, and he would stay. How he'd done it would remain his secret. "Let go of the connection, Aspen!"

But I couldn't.

The energy sucked me in like a black hole, so all-encompassing that I couldn't escape it. I would have lost myself, my whole being, in it if someone hadn't crashed into me at that very moment. My body was pulled to the ground and I hit the stone floor hard. All the air was knocked out of my lung. I wrenched my eyes open and saw Maglor above me, his eyes wild. We stared at each other for a heartbeat, then he said under his breath, "Why isn't the connection cut?"

Before he or I could come up with an answer, there was a bang so loud I couldn't hear anything but a fierce ringing noise in my ears. And I still felt the connection to the Silmaril pulling me closer.

"No!" Maglor yelled a second time, frantic, desperate. But I could no longer see him, even though my eyes were wide open. It was as if I was floating, heavy and light as a feather at the same time.

As if I was falling.

As if I was going to tear apart on the inside.

Then everything around me went black.