SEQUAL TO DRAGONS OF MIDDLE EARTH! PLEASE READ THAT FIRST!
A.N: I do not own Skyrim/Lord of The Rings or any of the Characters. I am only saying this once rather than repeating it through every chapter!
P.S: Please let me know if anything is wrong, I did adjust a few things to make up for timelines and such so forgive me on that.
Chapter 1,
By the time Gandalf reached the base of Isengard, the wind had begun to howl across the plains. The towering spire of Orthanc rose like a blackened fang from the circle of stone, its edges too sharp, too clean, as though the mountain itself had been carved open by hands that no longer remembered mercy. Shadows lengthened at its base, the sun retreating beyond the hills as though unwilling to witness what might unfold beneath those walls.
Gandalf swung down from his horse with practiced ease, though his knees ached. He let his hand linger on the animal's neck, fingers tightening slightly. The beast trembled—not from weariness, but from unease. Even the air here felt wrong. Still, he said nothing. He gave the horse a brief pat, then turned toward the grand archway of Orthanc's entrance.
He had been here before—many times, in years past. He had walked these halls when the stars seemed brighter and the world quieter. But as he stepped into the cool interior of the tower, he felt it at once—the shift, the imbalance. Something unseen had settled into the bones of the place.
The air was colder than it should have been, not from mountain chill, but from something older—something that repelled warmth. The stone beneath his boots echoed his every step too loudly, and the torches lining the walls flickered low, their flames dimmer than memory recalled. The tower still looked as it always had—smooth, dark, impeccable—but there was a stillness in the silence now that felt less like peace and more like something holding its breath.
And then he saw it.
A curtain now stood across the vast chamber in a corner that had once been bare save for a silver brazier and a table of scrolls.
Heavy and black, it hung from ceiling to floor, thick as night and utterly opaque. It didn't sway in the faint air currents, nor ripple in the light. It stood there, motionless and absolute, like a wall of shadow carved into fabric. It hadn't been there before. Gandalf was sure of it.
He stepped forward, drawn toward it without meaning to be, his brow furrowing. The curtain absorbed the torchlight rather than reflecting it. No outline could be seen through it, and no shapes hinted at what lay behind. But the presence… the feeling it radiated—was cold, deep, and terribly still.
His chest tightened.
Then, from behind him, came the voice. "Smoke rises once more from the Mountain of Doom." The words rang clear through the chamber, quiet but undeniable, as though the very stones of Orthanc chose to carry them.
Gandalf didn't turn immediately. His gaze lingered on the curtain a second longer, searching for some hint, some reason for its existence, before slowly shifting to the sound of approaching footsteps.
"The shadow takes shape in the darkness of Mordor," the voice continued, calm and level, but with something deeper beneath it- something measured.
The sound of robes brushing the floor echoed behind the words, followed by the firm tap of staff against stone. Saruman's silhouette emerged from the upper walkway, descending with the slow certainty of one who believed himself above haste.
"The hour grows late," he said, eyes fixed on Gandalf now. "And Gandalf the Grey rides to Isengard seeking my counsel." Gandalf inclined his head, but his eyes flicked again toward the curtain.
Saruman stood at Orthanc's arched window, the light behind him cold and pale. The dark spires of the mountains stretched into the distant haze, jagged against a sky that had begun to smother its sun. Far off in the east, veiled in cloud, Mordor waited. He was not sleeping. He was watching.
"Mordor stirs," Saruman said quietly, his voice echoing into the stillness like a breath held too long. "Sauron has regained much of his former strength. He cannot yet take physical form… but his spirit is no weaker."
Gandalf stood beside him, his staff in hand, his eyes narrowed as he listened. The shadows in the room felt too heavy, the torches too dim.
"Concealed within his fortress, he watches," Saruman went on. "The Lord of Mordor sees more than he ever did in flesh. His gaze pierces cloud, shadow, earth, and flesh." He turned his head slightly, eyes falling on Gandalf's. "You know of what I speak."
Gandalf's voice was soft, reluctant. "The Eye of Sauron."
Saruman gave a slow nod, stepping away from the window. "A great eye, lidless, wreathed in flame. It burns across the lands of the east, searching for what was once scattered. And now, it begins to find them."
He swiftly moved across the floor, his boots silent on polished stone. His robes swept behind him like trailing smoke. Gandalf followed, wariness blooming in his chest.
"He is gathering all evil to him," Saruman said. "Not only beasts and men. Things darker. Older. Creatures that have not walked the world in an age. Their names forgotten, but not their hunger."
He stopped beside a low pedestal half-hidden behind a pillar. His hand hovered just above it, as if reluctant to touch what sat there.
"Very soon," he continued, "Sauron will have enough strength to cover Middle-earth in flame. His armies are rising. From the black lands, the ruins of the north, and caverns beneath the world. But not only soldiers. Not only numbers."
Gandalf watched him closely. "You speak as one who has seen more than smoke and whispers."
Saruman finally turned his gaze toward him fully. "I have."
There was no pride in his voice. No fear. Just a terrible certainty.
"There is a weapon," he said.
The words hung in the air, heavy and unyielding.
Saruman lingered beside the pedestal, his hand resting on its surface with a stillness that made the moment feel suspended in time. The flames in the sconces flickered low, casting thin ribbons of shadow across the tower's black stone walls. Gandalf stood opposite him, watching, though he had the sense he was only seeing what Saruman allowed him to. There was something behind the wizard's voice now—calculated restraint, as though he weighed every word like it might tip a scale neither of them could see.
"There are things in this world not forged," Saruman said softly, not looking up. "Not hewn by mortal hands or shaped by smith's fire. Things born of will, of battle, of sacrifice. Power that clings to flesh and bone long after breath has faded. That kind of strength doesn't decay… it waits."
Gandalf said nothing. The torches seemed to dim further, the air tightening around him like a thread pulled taut. Saruman's gaze drifted away, not toward the window this time, but downward—toward the heart of Orthanc, as if something unseen stirred below.
"It wasn't hidden in some ruin," Saruman continued. "Not buried with secrecy, or locked beneath spells. It lay beneath the open sky. Beneath grass and moss. Beneath a flowering tree." His voice dropped lower. "Someone placed it there with care. As if that alone would keep it safe."
A chill ran through Gandalf's spine, but he kept his voice measured. "A grave."
"Yes," Saruman answered, almost too quickly. "But not forgotten. Not truly. Sauron's eye stretches wide, Gandalf. He remembers. And he was looking. Even now, the shadows claw at the world's edges, searching for what the living have chosen to leave behind."
Gandalf's brow furrowed. "And you… found it."
Saruman nodded once. "Before he could. Before it could be twisted."
Gandalf's following words were quiet and wary. "You exhumed the dead."
"I recovered something the world was too careless to guard," Saruman said. There was no triumph in his voice, but no remorse, either. "I saw what it could become. What he would have made it. I ensured it remained ours."
Gandalf's throat tightened. "It wasn't yours to take."
Saruman's eyes met his, steady and cold. "It belongs to no one now."
For a moment, the tower was silent, wholly and utterly still. And in that stillness, Gandalf felt it—something was wrong. A presence not evil, but displaced, taken from peace. There were no screams, no blood. But something in the world had shifted.
Saruman moved with silent purpose, his footsteps echoing softly down the long, cold corridor. He led Gandalf deeper into Orthanc, into levels the Grey Wizard had never before walked—not because they had been hidden, but because he had never thought to ask what lay below. Now, he followed not out of curiosity, but with dread coiled low in his gut, tightening with every step.
The air grew colder as they descended, the torches sputtering in their sconces as if reluctant to give light to what waited below. The stone walls, once pristine, grew darker and damper, less a tower and more a tomb. The silence was heavy here—too heavy—the kind that hummed beneath the skin, whispering that whatever waited beyond should not be seen.
They finally reached the base, where a small, circular chamber spread out before them. Torches burned low along the walls, their flames pale and flickering, as if choked by the very air. And there, standing like a barrier against all that was good and right, hung a thick black curtain—its fabric heavy and still, absorbing all light. It did not sway. It did not breathe. It simply waited.
Saruman did not hesitate.
He reached forward, grasped the curtain with both hands, and pulled.
The fabric fell away in a single motion, landing in a coiled heap on the ground.
Gandalf stopped breathing.
His heart lurched—not in panic, but in how one's chest convulses when faced with something that should not be. His body went cold, his grip slackened on his staff, and his eyes widened with a disbelief too great for words.
Laid out upon a black marble pedestal was a woman's body.
Elena.
Though Saruman never said her name, Gandalf knew her instantly. Her face, though paler now than he remembered, was unmistakable. Her dark hair spilled around her shoulders like a midnight veil, her features serene—but not peaceful. This was not sleep. This was not rest. It was a violation masked as preservation.
Her skin had not aged, not cracked, not faded. But across it… horror.
Black sigils had been painted in long, curling strokes down her arms and across her chest. One wrapped around her throat like a noose. Another traced her temple, spiraling down her cheek like a tear etched in shadow. Her hands, folded neatly across her breastbone, bore markings like brands. Each symbol felt wrong, not only in its shape but also in how it seemed to crawl beneath the skin, as if it were painted and etched into her very being.
The sheet that covered her from the waist down was stained faintly, as though old blood had once tried to resist the darkness.
Gandalf took a step forward, but his legs felt hollow. He didn't speak. He couldn't because there were no words for what had been done. Not yet.
Saruman's voice cut through the silence like a blade dipped in oil. "She has not rotted. Not a breath of decay. No stiffness, no fading. As if the world itself has refused to let her go."
Gandalf's gaze didn't move. His eyes were locked on her face, the closed eyes that had once gleamed with fire and fury, kindness and defiance. Now they were shut too tightly. Her body is still. Her skin is cold. And yet—some part of her remained.
"Do you see?" Saruman asked, his tone quiet, almost reverent. "What she once was… what she still could be."
Gandalf's hand twitched at his side. His throat tightened. "She was your friend," he whispered.
Saruman didn't blink. "She is more than memory. She is powerful. Still whole. Still unspoiled by his hand. I preserved her."
Gandalf turned slowly, and the look he gave Saruman was one of sorrow deeper than rage. "You desecrated her."
"She was already lost to the earth."
"No," Gandalf said, voice rising, breaking. "She was given to it and given with love. With honor. She had peace."
Saruman's face hardened. "And what good would peace have done her now? Would you have let her rot while the world burned? Let him tear her from the ground instead and turn her into something far worse?"
Gandalf's shoulders trembled. "You already have."
His eyes dropped back to her. She had once stood beside him in battle. She had ridden through fire, torn wounds open with her blades, and bound others closed with her hands. She had laughed. She had lived. And now she lay still and marked like a puppet awaiting a string.
It was not her face that haunted him most. It was how quiet she was now, how empty, as if her soul had been pulled too far to find its way back.
Gandalf stood still, as if the weight of what he saw had frozen him in place. The chamber felt colder now, as if the walls were recoiling in shame. Before him, upon a black marble pedestal, lay a woman whose face he knew better than his reflection. Her body, carefully arranged, looked as though it had been laid there only moments ago. But Gandalf knew that decades had passed since her death—since she had fallen with a sword through her body, blood on her lips, and light in her eyes.
Elena.
The name did not pass his lips, but it screamed within him. Her dark hair lay like ink across the stone, silver beads still woven through the strands as they had been in life. Her face was untouched by time—serene, almost sleeping—but it was a sleep twisted into stillness. There was no peace here. Only the terrible quiet of something sacred made unnatural.
His gaze drifted downward. There should have been a wound—a gaping, final mark where Azog's blade had torn through her. But there was none. Instead, a scar curved across her side, broad and puckered, as if the flesh had sealed itself unnaturally. Not healed, no. Closed. As though her body had refused to decay, refused to surrender to the grave. Time, it seemed, had bent around her and left her unchanged.
And then there were the marks.
Painted in thick, black ink, sigils twisted across her skin. They wrapped her arms, circled her throat, crept across her collarbones like dark vines strangling a memory. Each symbol was foreign—crude in form, yet precise in placement. They looked alive in the flickering torchlight, as if they pulsed beneath the skin, whispering in a language only the dead could understand. Gandalf felt sick. Not with fear, but with grief. A deep, soul-aching grief that told him something precious had been violated beyond repair.
"She was too powerful to leave buried," Saruman said softly behind him, stepping beside the pedestal. There was no shame in his voice. No remorse. Only a terrifying certainty, spoken like truth. "Too rare. Too important. I could not let her rot beneath stone while the world marches to ruin."
Gandalf turned his head slowly. His voice, when it came, was low and frayed. "You… took her."
"I rescued her."
"You desecrated her grave."
Saruman's expression didn't change. He looked at Elena like a scholar might study a relic—an artifact of forgotten power, not someone who had once laughed, bled, and stood beside them. "She had already been left behind. I brought her back to where she could serve again. The world is ending, Gandalf. You know this. We are on the cusp of fire and ruin. And she… she is a flame yet unspent."
Gandalf's heart was a stone in his chest. He looked back at her—her closed eyes, still hands, and scar at the painted marks that had no place on her skin. She had died with honor. She had been laid to rest beneath an open sky. And now, she lay beneath stone, reduced to a vessel.
"She was your kin," he said quietly. "She stood beside you. Fought for this world. For all of us."
"She can fight for it again," Saruman replied. "If we are wise. If we act. The world we knew is gone. The enemy grows stronger every hour. And you cling to graves and ghosts."
"You made her into this."
"I preserved her." His voice remained calm, but steel began to thread through it. "Her body has not aged. Her strength remains. Even death could not undo her. Doesn't that mean something to you?"
Gandalf's throat tightened. "Yes. It means she was meant to be left in peace."
"She was meant to rise," Saruman said. "Not by accident, but by purpose. There is power in her still—power that can shape what comes next."
He stepped closer, eyes sharp with cold conviction. "We cannot win against Sauron. Not as we are. You see that, don't you? The armies he gathers and the rising darkness will sweep over all who resist. But there is still a way."
Gandalf said nothing, though his hand curled tighter around his staff.
Saruman extended a hand. "Join me. With her preserved, guided, we could survive. We could see the dawn of a new age—not one lost to fire but born through understanding. Control." Gandalf looked at that outstretched hand, then back at Elena.
She had been so alive once, so fierce. He remembered her voice, how it carried over a battlefield, and how she comforted others before herself. The woman lying before him now was not her—not truly. She had been torn from the earth, painted like a weapon, and held in stasis like a secret waiting to be unleashed.
He had feared Sauron. But now, for the first time, he feared Saruman. And the grief that bloomed inside him then was vast. Not just for Elena. But for what had already been lost.
Gandalf stood frozen, the soft words of refusal still lingering on his tongue, though their weight had settled in his chest like stone. Deep down, beneath the horror and silence, he hoped some part of Saruman might still be reachable, that this was madness brought on by fear, not conviction. But the way Saruman looked at him now… There was no flicker of doubt, no hesitation. Only patience. And pity.
"You will understand in time," Saruman murmured, his voice heavy, not with guilt, but with certainty. "When the fire spreads across the mountains and hope is drowned beneath ash, you'll remember that I offered you a place among those who will endure."
He turned away with the slow grace of a man performing something rehearsed. Gandalf watched as he approached the pedestal, his staff held before him with quiet reverence—not toward the woman lying there, but toward what he believed she represented. The marble beneath her began to hum faintly, a resonance that could not be heard so much as felt, vibrating through the soles of his boots, into his bones.
Saruman moved around her body with measured steps, beginning a slow circle. He started to speak again, but the language had changed—it was no longer the Common Tongue. It was darker, guttural, and layered with tones that should not have coexisted. The words scraped the air like rusted blades against stone, each syllable pulsing with malice and invocation. It was not a chant—it was a summons.
Gandalf's breath caught as he realized what was happening.
The black crystal atop Saruman's staff began to glow, veins of crimson light threading through its depth like blood waking from stillness. With each word spoken, he lowered the staff and touched it gently to one of the sigils painted across Elena's skin. As the crystal made contact, the mark beneath it ignited with a searing red glow. It pulsed outward, twisting like molten lines beneath her skin, curling across her body in unnatural paths.
The markings were responding.
They were not painted.
They were binding.
Gandalf took a single step forward, unable to tear his eyes from her. "Saruman," he said, his voice strained and hollow. "Please. Stop this."
But Saruman did not falter. His chant deepened, rising in pitch, echoing off the chamber walls in rhythms that seemed to pulse with the very stones. He moved to her shoulder, brushing the glowing staff across another sigil. More light flared. Her hands twitched—barely, but enough to freeze Gandalf's blood.
He stepped forward again.
"Saruman—this is not what she was. You're twisting her."
Still, the White Wizard did not stop. He raised his staff, chanting louder now, the words harsh and sharp, dragging power from the air. The torches dimmed further, the room darker even as her skin grew brighter.
Gandalf lunged.
He had no spell prepared, no attack—just a desperate need to end whatever was unfolding. But before his hand could reach his staff, Saruman turned.
Saruman unleashed a burst of force with a single word, not in anger but command.
It struck Gandalf in the chest like a battering ram.
He was lifted from his feet, thrown backwards across the chamber with impossible strength. His staff clattered to the stone floor, forgotten. He hit the wall with a sickening crack, pain exploding through his ribs and shoulder as the breath was torn from his lungs. He collapsed, coughing, gasping, the echo of Saruman's chant still vibrating through his skull.
And still it continued.
The glow beneath Elena's skin had spread down her arms, across her throat, seeping like fire through cold veins. The sigils danced, subtly reshaping as Saruman touched each one in sequence. Her chest remained still. Her eyes closed. But something in the air was changing. The pressure, the weight of the magic, was no longer just ritual.
It was awakening.