Lotr Destiny

by Dextrode

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Anthem Anatheme (Destiny / The Lord of the Rings)

Thread starter Black Lister Start date Nov 19, 2018 Tags destiny (game series) lord of the rings (middle-earth) crossover

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Threadmarks Chapter 11: The Chill Before the Climb

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Black Lister

Mar 19, 2022

#212

My tale trails away as the following days and nights came to mind; so much happening in the space of so little time.

I don't share every detail, nor did I mention the more… private matters. I also leave out anything technologically related, and word them as a matter of arcane ministration. For the sake of my company.

The sun has climbed high into the sky ere I take my pause, and our small campsite is established for the day ere night comes and we must begin our trek once more. The Fellowship has gathered around me to partake of my romance, though Aragorn has remained above us, under the shade of a small tree on the lip of a small earthen rise. Now Legolas has joined him, their eyes scanning the horizon for any movement that isn't ours.

I make to continue, but the voice of Frodo draws my attention. "Your account of the lady Lyra paints her to be a commander, and a valiant warrior besides. Are women commonly rulers of Men?"

Thinking on it, it strikes me that I should have considered not only the technological level of society in Middle-Earth, but also the level of society itself. If this fantastical medieval era is anything like Old Earth cultures, then it stands to reason that it would be women who would handle the lion's share of homemaking while the men ministrated the affairs of industry, state, and war; that is to say, workers, statesmen, and soldiers. Assuredly commendable task by any measure, though pre-Collapse society seemed to ignorantly jeer at the concept of customary gender roles, even in eras far displaced from their own.

I will say however that according to those legends recorded by the Elves, women are held in particular regard, though never as commanders of men; rather, they often are portrayed as cunning beguilers and heroines of virtue and spirit. Like Lúthien of eld, who famously wove an enchantment of sleep into her song, dimming the eyes of even Morgoth himself.

Now there is a character of renown.

I spent less time studying the heroes of the ancient past than I did studying its evils, but of those I did, Lúthien stood out head and shoulders among the rest. I might even admit that her tale struck a chord upon my heartstrings.

An immortal who gave up her everlasting life to save and be with a mortal, knowing what suffering may come from her choice? Call me biased, but parallels being what they are, it's my favorite Elven story of those I've read. Bar none.

But such figures appear rare enough so as to be called 'legendary' in the first place; it's likely there is no modern heroin for the current age…

"We judge not the form of one's valor, only the manner in which it is wielded," I say to Frodo, confirming to him with a firm nod. "And do not doubt her capability as a warrior either; the first time we met, she'd never seen another Guardian before. And morals being what they were in those days – or weren't, rather – she tried to kill me. Damn near managed it a number of times too… But I managed to pacify her long enough to settle things. I won't say we became fast friends, but I will say our bond was undeniably strong, even into the waxing days of the City."

"Well, I for one am glad she did not kill you, sir," Pippin exclaimed, clapping his hands cheerfully. "Else our misery would be compounded by the cold weather. And I imagine a wizard's sword is as useful as their magicks too, likely. And if you say lady Lyra tried to kill you, then she must be at least as capable!"

I scratch my chin with a laugh, sipping from my flask and opting not to specify that 'tried to kill' was code for 'didn't think to go after my Ghost.' And she was certainly capable. A bit rough around the edges, but she had that spark of talent that isn't often seen, even among Guardians. I can honestly say that I – and we – were lucky to have her along for the ride.

"I've heard rumor of your hardiness in Rivendell," Legolas commented with distinct interest obvious in his tone. "They say you cannot be slain by a blade."

I swear to the Traveler, you could not have cued a better spit-take.

"Legolas!" Gandalf exclaimed, astonishment upon his face. "Do you not think it rude, even unwise to speak so glibly?"

For his part, the wood-elf looked entirely blasé.

"I would not say that I am glib, Gandalf," he counters with a… somewhat indignant expression, "but I do not think it inappropriate to confirm question's truth; if two of our Fellowship were in mortal danger and I may only save one, thereby abandoning the other to certain doom, I should like to know that one of the two is more able to weather their trials than the other."

"Well… Well yes, that is good information to be aware of but there is a time and a place for such things," Gandalf countered(?) with a single breath. It seems he was of the mind to protect such secrets of mine, lest prying ears from afar avail the Enemy's servants.

…A concern firmly in my mind as well, thank you very much you Elf asshole!

I do not interrupt the two's argument, not out of a lack of want to, but because I'm still hacking out what water went down the wrong pipe. Even so, I'm giving the elf the best death-stare I can manage.

Ah, sure enough, as I eye the other members of our Fellowship, they are looking between us, coming to their own conclusions on what was truth and what was teasing hyperbole. And it seems they have opted to consider Gandalf's response a form of confirmation to Legolas' query.

"What?! Is this true?" Frodo asks of a sudden, his pointed ears perking up nigh visibly as he did. And it is clear he speaks for the minds of his kinsmen as they straighten, as if a sudden thunder had struck too near for comfort.

Yet the only real discomfort is my own…

I cough into my fist a few final times before collecting myself and eyeing the perpetrator. "Legolas," I begin, speaking as softly as I may, "if I were to ask who told you, would I feel betrayed by the answer?" I do not want to think that Glorfindel was secretly a gossip all this time…

"I was speaking with one Nilthrein, a guard of Elrond's house, and it came up in discourse what he witnessed during one your practices with lord Glorfindel," he explains with as simple a tone as one discussing the weather. "Though I cannot apologize for having been told, if an apology is due for sharing with our fellowship, then I will offer it."

Ah, well at least it wasn't Glorfindel… I am only meagerly comforted.

I have heard tell that Silvan elves were more… for lack of a better term, 'wild', more akin to their forested home than to the prim and propriety of the Noldor such as Elrond. Actually, strictly speaking that's just conjecture; Elrond is technically a Peredhi, or a half-elf. However, considering he was the herald of Gil-Galad, High King of the Noldor before his death, and founded Rivendell as a refuge for the Jewel-Smiths of Eregion, who so happened to also be Noldor…

Although it might all just be pointless to classify him regardless; as a First Age elf, he's so old that many bloodlines might have only just gotten their start around his youth.

I'll have to consult my copies of the records... Later.

By his words and countenance, Legolas has so far struck me as a no-nonsense sort of Elf, bearing the mark of a realist. I suppose in that way, I feel mildly slighted because somewhere in my mind, I felt a kinship with him, if only in that trait alone. That said, it's hardly something I can hold against him: putting myself in his position, I'd be curious too if the shoe were on the other foot.

Even so, of all those traits that I have or may yet demonstrate in the course of our journey, I most wanted to keep my… toughness… secret for as long as conceivably possible. Arcane arts of unknown nature are one thing, surely, but people start to get a little distrusting when it comes to immortality, perceived or otherwise.

The ability to live forever has long been seeded in humanity's mind as a boon begotten of evil machinations. This is especially the case in literature, where the cost of immortality is often too great to justify, or manifests in such a way as to corrupt absolutely.

And, truth be told, my trust in the Elves of Rivendell has not been unlimited. Even of those things I shared with Elrond and Glorfindel, there are many things I did not. That being the case, I'd rather just avoid an exposition. Spin a yarn or two. A little fabrication here and there.

But perhaps here, among this odd assortment of characters joined by mutual desire to do away with the encroaching evil of this star… This Fellowship of the Ring…

I look at the many eyes around me. Eyes brimming with wonder. Eyes brimming with determination. Brimming with understanding – rather, a desire to understand.

But none with suspicion. Even in the eyes of Boromir I see no hint of distrust. Merely a desire for the truth.

I am reminded of my thoughts atop the watchtower, with Elrond, Aragorn, Gandalf, and Glorfindel. Of my doubts regarding my newfound friends. Blind trust may be vice worthy of excising. But doubt is by no means a virtue. Skepticism, in moderation, is a good thing.

In moderation.

I breathe a deep, decompressing sigh. Why are secrets so exhausting? No wonder the Hive worship Savathûn; the effort she puts into her deceptions must be staggeringly immense. Well worthy of worship at any rate.

Perhaps honesty unfettered is at last due to have its day.

"While it is true that I do not age, I am far from undying." I explain, making sure to emphasize the point. "My people were saved from the Darkness by the Traveler, who in its dying breath created messengers to seek out worthy champions to do what the Traveler no longer can. This a few of you know already, though I admit I have not told the tale in full."

I shift my gaze between my nosy compatriots and cough into my fist, pointedly eyeing Legolas in address.

"Nor will I."

My words are like needles, deflating the expectations of my companions. The temptation to simply bare it all and unladen my spirit of my many deceptions and half-truths, mystifications and blatant lies… It is strong. Too strong.

How I fit into this strange, strange puzzle of a scenario is still a prevailing mystery, and as I am wont to believe that I am the master of my own fate – the navigator of my own destiny – I cannot help but suspect the whole series of events; that I still do not know the why or how of my arrival in Middle-Earth and that my short-term memory of anything prior to it is conveniently shot leaves me skeptical in the extreme.

Of the Fellowship? No, not really.

Of some other mysterious player in the great Game? Unquestionably.

Until I know more, I cannot risk too many revelations, and certainly none of particular significance. Thus, I am compelled to keep my cards close to my chest…

The more knowledge one can obfuscate, the more significant one becomes. Secrets breed possibility. Secrets breed… sway.

If I am being moved by some invisible hand as I suspect, then I must not allow that hand to know the true value of the piece it is playing with. Not until that piece is prepared to overturn the tables and end the game with its own hands.

My own hands.

Perhaps they think me a knight, or a bishop. Maybe they even think me so simple as to be a rook; powerful when wound up and set in a single direction. And perhaps any other Guardian might fit such a bill. But it is not in vain when I say that I am something far beyond the banality of my brother an sister Guardians.

Let them think they know my moves. Let them think they know my uses.

What do the rules of the game matter to me? I am player and piece both, paracausal and unbound.

Is it a coincidence that I was first found by the Elves? By Glorfindel? An Elf who radiates a pure Light so akin to my own? Should I not wonder why my discovery came so close to the arrival of Frodo and the Ring of Power? Or that all of the above should culminate in Elrond's little meeting to decide the fate of all free peoples on this planet? It may be in the spirit of humility that I might describe myself as a fool, but I am not so blind as to not see the course of events meticulously arranged in delicate fashion.

"Think of me what you will. But know that I am wholly dedicated to the defense of this land and Sauron's defeat," I continue, issuing my voice with the force of genuine conviction. What I am does not matter. What does matter is that I will help extinguish the evil that crawls across the land. By all my might I will see this done."

Though truth be told, my objectives did not necessarily follow in that order. By reputation alone, Sauron is, in my estimation, at least on the same level as Crota, if not at the level of his sire. That in and of itself is cause for my concern… and my undivided attentions.

I let my words echo in my fellows' ears for some time before I continue, my voice lowering to a calm, quiet, conversational level. To my surprise, rather than react with disgruntled annoyance, disappointment or… anything like that, I am met with faces full of smiles.

"Well, of course! That's what we're all here to do, aren't we?" Merriadoc exclaims with wave of his arms. "But you've committed the grave mistake of stoking a Hobbit's curiosity. We have many questions and more about you, sir, and though you may or may not answer, you can be assured we will ask them all the same."

The indomitable, wild-eyed wonder of the Hobbit-folk bores into me in a way that reminds me too much of the children of the City, and not only because of their stature. Rather, it is the impression their race has so far given me; that they enjoy the art of discourse and rhetoric. They enjoy stories and fantastical tales, and the retelling of them with aplomb; the amount of time these four in particular were holed up in Bilbo's room or gathered close together in the Hall of Fire as the elder Baggins recounted those adventures he had experienced since last they'd met was, in a word, considerable.

"Now there's no need to go picking into a person's private affairs. Mister Lazarus says he's for the cause of tossin' mister Bilbo's ring into that mountain of fire, and that's as good a mark in my book as any." Sam suddenly interjects, pointing to his kinfolk with a chastising finger wave. "And so long as he's doing right by mister Frodo, well… I figure we ought to do right by him."

I open my mouth to retort, only to find myself momentarily silenced at the unlooked-for defense on my behalf from the taciturn Hobbit. For the many weeks I have observed Sam, I have determined him to be a gentle sort of soul. At least, gentler than most. Quieter too, and wholly devoted to the care of Frodo since our journey began in Rivendell. Ever since setting out from their home in the Shire actually, as I've gathered.

I've known people like him before. From farmhands, to technicians, plains-folk to city-goers, there are those who have a servant's heart; someone who feels more at ease putting others before himself. 'Guardians of the mortal variety' as old Eva liked to call them. Hell, Eva was one of them, though she'd never admit it. The kind who would only stain their hands with blood in the defense of the defenseless.

As I have the rest of the Fellowship, I've watched Sam for a while now. I often see him counting and recounting the contents in each of his kin's packs, double and triple checking their inventory, and speaking up with confidence when supplies start running low.

But he is otherwise shy; it is uncommon for him to talk to any other for any reason save those mentioned. For him to speak up on my behalf is more of a surprise than I am prepared for.

"Oh come on now Sam," Merry cajoles with his hands on his hips. "You're probably the most curious one among us. You just won't admit to it."

"Now see here," Sam all but stutters indignantly. "I'm not of a mind to go rooting into someone else's business I've got no right to having. That's asking for trouble that is," he says matter-of-factly. "And it ain't proper neither."

He fidgets uncomfortably in so doing, looking briefly (but pointedly) in Gandalf's direction as he says so.

Likewise, I see a contented gleam in the old wizard's eyes… Perhaps a lesson once given in the past has taken root? He certainly seems satisfied with himself, what with that smile almost hidden beneath his thick grey beard.

But it is Frodo who interjects, looking my way with a smile. It is a bright smile. Bright and honest.

"I think we should ask Lazarus himself what he thinks. Though seeing as he has already begun the tale, I should very much like to hear more about the woman."

I think, though, that the Baggins' words betray his intent; I do not fail to recognize his clever use of the age-old 'foot-in-the-door' technique, nor the way he turns the conversation in such a way as to be settled at my discretion.

Despite the situation, I find myself tickled at the Hobbit anyways. How can I not? A pure sort of curiosity like that cannot be faulted, and I as a Warlock would be a hypocrite to do so.

Some Warlocks, like those of the ilk of the Praxic Order's Aunor Mahal guard knowledge with jealous fervor. That in and of itself is not a bad thing, but where I am also guilty keeping my secrets to myself, I have never discouraged others from looking for the answers themselves, if indeed they are capable enough to find them. Folks like Aunor would sooner drown the overly curious in scorching Light than let them learn the truth.

No one should be punished for asking questions, even if the questions lead to unpleasant answers.

A smile tugs at my lips. "Oh you do, do you? We'll there is certainly much to say about her," I say, as my mind races though a hundred years' worth of history. "About all of them, really. Lyra, Rigel, Eskal, Kamil…. All good friends. All gone their own ways now.

But though the air amongst us is light, the memories of those old days is as a weight on my shoulders and brow.

"What is one year to he who may live for thousands?" I ask the ring-bearing Hobbit quietly. "Even a meager hundred years passes by faster than you would imagine, Frodo Baggins. Rigel left on errantry, leading teams of Hunters deep into hostile territory and cutting the rot out from behind enemy lines. Eskal put his craftiness to use smuggling our people out of zones of conflict. Kamil… I haven't heard a whisper of him for many years now."

I remember those last bitter-sweet days vividly. Not long after word of a more formalized defense of the large tracts of land around the Traveler reached us, an Iron Lord deigned to make the long trip to meet and parley, and to offer us and ours a place beneath the it.

It was a big ask but combined with rumors of increased Fallen activity in the region and others that spoke of many Warlords laying down their arms in the face of the Iron Lords' power, we were left with little other option.

What had kept the Fallen off balance in the region around the Eye for so long were the various roving cadres of Risen. Their patrols were chaotic and random, and sudden above all. Fallen rarely had time before first spotting them and their inevitable assault, much to the aliens' chagrin.

But with the Iron Lords killing those who broke their so-called 'Iron Decree' and pressganging those who were too afraid to die final deaths, the Iron Lords' ranks swelled, the Fallen found fewer and fewer foes to oppose their plundering, and the ability for others to resist them diminished to untenable percentages. In the end, the more the Iron Lords spread their influence, the more Ghostless folk saw huddling under the Traveler in the north as the preferable course of action.

To that end, it was Lord Radegast who made the long trek south, to us, to offer protection and promises of safety if our people were to go on pilgrimage to the Traveler. It was easy to see their game. They wanted to unite the remnants of Humanity. Not a bad idea, all things considered, but their bullish methods were justified by lofty morals. Too lofty for our tastes.

Eskal was furious with them. We all were. The Eye was our home, and the Iron Lords were disrupting the equilibrium of the precarious power balance that had naturally evolved across the region. He rightly argued that in their quest to sublimate all wayward Warlord factions, they had actually endangered the people they purported to protect.

A view we all shared.

Subsequently, Radegast's initial overtures were received… poorly. As much as the man meant well, but he often couldn't see past the righteousness of his cause. To this day, I still bear that grudge against him.

Traveler rest his noble soul.

--

"Mother fucker."

"Please, there's no need for that."

"There's every need! What right do you have to waltz into our turf and dictate to us how things'll go down?"

"I'm just here to deliver my offer. Nothing more. If I didn't think your group trustworthy, I'd be delivering bullets instead. Let that stand as testament to my genuineness."

"Bullets or bullshit, it's all the same. The more Warlords you shut down or subjugate, the fewer factions are left to harass the Fallen."

Eskal leaned aggressively over the table around which we were arrayed. We five on one side, and three Iron Lords on the other. The one called Radegast was firmly planted, his stance neither too casual nor too antagonistic.

"All you're doing is putting more people in danger by doing the scav's work for them." Eskal spat, literally, at him. "You must think us some kind of stupid to not see your game."

Five of us, three of them.

Radegast's short brown hair, and beard didn't cut too imposing a face, but it belied the bulk of his ornately forged armor, like the storied knights of old. Of the other two, one was a dark-skinned man with hair shaved close to his scalp; his eyes were hard and wary, his body every bit at thick as his fellow's. The last was a woman with short crimson hair; in her hands was a thick-barreled LMG with two drum mags slung beneath it; she stood easier than the others, her hips shifted at an angle that was less than prepared for combat.

Perhaps her body language was intentional. Maybe she was just that confident; the Iron Lords had every right to be. Their reputation well earned.

Radegast's eyes narrowed at Eskal pointedly. "The only game being played here is the game you're playing with your people's lives. Excusing those who do wrong to the Lightless because they inadvertently keep your people safe is a shallow shortsighted argument. We're righting the injustices the only way they can be; by offering a choice. If you abuse your power, you face us, and then you've got two options. Submit and face the consequences, maybe even get a chance to make amends for your misdeeds, or face the reckoning of the Iron Decree."

Eskal sneered with palpable disdain, but it was Rigel whose measured voice cut through the hothead's focus.

"So where do we fit into those two options of yours?" He asked cooly. "We ain't inclined to bedlam, so your reckonin's got nothing to do with us. And I think you know that; I don't see an army behind you so you ain't here for a war."

The black man grunted, almost in offense and crossed his arms. "War? It would barely be a brawl."

"If it comes to that," the woman added, glancing from us to her companion. "But like you said, we're not here for a fight."

"You lot are in a special sort of situation; we have no quarrel with you whether your accept or decline," Radegast continued "If you say no, then we leave you and yours in peace. But if you accept, you'll have the full support of the Iron Lords behind you."

"And all we need to do is tuck our tails and heel, is that it?" Kamil drawled, flipping a bullet end over end with a one hand, the metallic tapping of the brass on the table's surface pointedly rhythmic. He shook his head. "I think you all need to take a good hard look in the mirror."

"We know how it looks," the woman, Jolder, admitted with a placating wave. "But what we're doing is right. Warlords across the globe are bound to no other law their own. The people who rely on them to survive suffer for their savage whimsy. They steal and kill to their hearts' content and the only hope for the common people is that some other, less despotic gang of Warlords come around to replace them."

Radegast nodded at her words. "The Iron Decree is harsh for a reason. Warlords don't have much to fear. Anything less than a final death would mean nothing to them, the same as it would to you or us. We're doing the right thing. Protecting the people. Behaving like the responsible guardians we were risen to be."

Lyra's dry laugh cut the room with its gritty tone. "With a head that big, it's a wonder you can hold yourself up straight."

For his part Radegast didn't so much as flinch. "Think what you want. That's your right. A right you've earned. I've seen your territories for myself. As far as Warlords go, you're good people. And the people you so valiantly protect are good too. If you don't want to join the Iron Lords, then fine. Don't. But we're cleaning up the garbage one way or another. And when the despots you rely on to keep the Fallen at bay are dead or disbanded, your people are going to look to you all the more for protection. For safety. Can you give them that? Can you promise them that?"

"Can you?" I bristled at his accusatory tone, throwing the question back at him. "You're plan calls for the moving of all our people across two continents, through deserts and jungles, and over mountains and oceans, all to reach some so-called promised land under the Traveler."

Radegast nodded sharply. "That's exactly right."

His unashamed tone left the room in silence.

"To be fair, we've never claimed it was a 'promised land'," the one called Saladin clarified, as if they'd ever described it as anything but. "But there is strength in numbers. We need to unite as one people. As one race. Not be scattered to the four corners of the globe."

Radegast balled his fists as he leaned forward on the table. "The Pilgrim Guard is standing by for my signal. We're ready to bring everything we've got to ferry your people to safety. Join the Iron Lords or don't. That's a choice you've earned. But your people need protection."

"What if we say no?" I stood up, uncrossing my legs from their position propped against the table. "What then? If you really believe what you say, then will you prove yourselves hypocrites by leaving them under our care, knowing that your actions will directly endanger them? Or will you prove yourselves as dishonest as your so-called prey, and try to kill us to assume leadership over the Eye?"

Radegast pursed his lips and for the first time lowered his gaze. It was a momentary display of unease. But it was only for a second. His eyes met ours again with renewed vigor.

"We will do what we can to supplement regional security; But yours is the only major settlement left for hundreds of miles, and consequently, prime target for Fallen assault.

"And whose fault is that, I wonder?" Eskal bit out.

He was deliberately ignored.

"The Eye is a supremely defensible position, and you've fortified it well; the Fallen will swarm you en masse, focusing all of their attentions onto this one spot. But even with what forces we can spare, it won't be enough if it comes to an all-out siege."

Saladin mirrored his comrade's stance, his titanic weight drawing a groan from the table. "You may not like it, but for the safety of your people, please… Consider the offer."

Silence reigned for the following seconds. Nobody moved.

Maybe they figured we would rail in defiance, or even attack them. I'm sure they hoped we wouldn't, but knowing Saladin as much as I do now, I have no doubt he was ready to tussle the moment any one of us made a move.

When none of us did, it was Radegast who gestured his comrades to withdraw.

"We'll await your response. You know how to reach us," he said. And with a tense motion, he turned and marched his fellow Iron Lords out of the room.

--

I know he meant well, but too often he was blinded by that righteousness. I also think it's fair to say he was usually right.

I shake my head of the old memories that creeped from the depths of my mind. Old grievances of darker days past.

"As for the woman in question," I continue, circling back to the subject of the ferocious female Hunter, "she went dark during an expedition to delve a Vex labyrinth. That is to say no one has heard anything from her in several years."

I spoke the words as if discussing the weather, but I cannot avoid the pained longing that blooms in my chest as I remember my dear friend and imagine what fate she has possibly met in the interim. Saint-14 might be the living proof that even death can be overturned with cunning and determination, but even he couldn't have returned if not for the efforts of the conqueror of the Black Garden.

Of all Guardians, that one seemed almost erroneously capable of making the impossible possible. Ever since their rebirth in the Light, the list of their accomplishments has grown long and gilded. Destroying the Heart of the Black Garden and crushing the House of Wolves almost singlehandedly, obliterating the soul of the Hive god, Crota, where an army of thousands of Guardians had failed, slaying divine Oryx, Taken King, who's repertoire of war and slaughter was beyond compare in all the long years of the universe… Not to mention hunting down the so-called 'Last Ahamkara' Riven-of-a-Thousand-Voices who hid herself behind secrets and twisted realities.

That such a glorious being could by intent or accident manage to bring the Titan of legend back to life didn't seem so strange a thing to believe; rather I think it would be strange to think they couldn't. I have no doubt that if they ever died a final death, they would somehow find a way to come back from it.

Saint-14's return was a miracle is putting it lightly, but crucially, it was not by his own power that he returned at all. Thus, if Lyra truly has been caught in the grips of Vex machinations…

My thoughts turn to poor Praedyth stuck in a pocket of time somewhen in the Vex network, listening, waiting, and signaling for rescue.

"I fear she may have… passed on," I say at last, suppressing a shaky breath; even inured to death as we Guardians might be, when it comes to the loss those who have shared decades or hundreds of years with you, those with whom a treacherous corner of your mind has ever hoped would live on in perpetuity with you, we are often the most vulnerable.

I know I am. I know my weaknesses.

My old friends… I hope they are all doing well…

The mood instantly dampens at my words, and many heads lower sympathetically.

"I can only guess," I add quickly, though it is only with hope that I do so. "After all, there's been no confirmation either way."

There seldom ever is.

A thought I viciously silence ere it's born-

A sudden shout tears me from my thoughts.

"Everybody into hiding!"

The command is accompanied by Aragorn leaping from atop the ridge and landing with a solid thud beside the fire, which he quickly puts out with a water canteen, scattering the still smoldering sticks about. "Lie down and be still!"

Thankfully, the Hobbit's bewildered expressions belie their obedience as they, as do we all, dive for cover, under holly bushes and in crevices in the rocks around us. I vanish into the deep of the hollow and steady my breath.

Whatever has Aragorn spooked was unlikely to be trivial.

Yet as the seconds tick by in eerie silence, naught but our breathing audible, and then only to those who wound up on top of each other in the mad scramble, nothing happens.

No war cries. No whizzing of arrows. No rattling of swords nor banging of shields, nor even the sound of marching feet.

Instead, a great host of cawing black birds descend like rain, so thick and voluminous that the sun is diminished by their passage. The great flock cries in myriad voices as it swarms around us, lasting – or lingering, perhaps – for as long as our breath is held.

And then just as suddenly the flock is gone. The sun returns and the only remnant of their passing being the fading shadow as the murder moves eastwards towards the base of the mountains.

Nobody moves for several minutes, and several more after that.

Only after our hearts begin to finally calm themselves from their panic do we clamber out of our hiding places, but not before Legolas confirmed our safety with a thorough scan of our surroundings.

One by one we leave our various places of hiding and return into the Sun's embrace.

"What was that? For what do we fear a flock of birds?" Pippin asked a bit breathlessly, his heart clearly calming less quickly than the rest.

"The Enemy has many spies in His service, both man and beast," Gandalf explains with a distasteful tone, leaning on his staff as he looks eastways to where the flight had passed. "And those are not ordinary birds; they are crebain out of Fangorn and Dunland, and are not native to this land."

Aragorn nods in agreement. "I thought to err on the side of caution. It's possible there is some trouble away south from which they are fleeing, but I think they are spying out the land. To wit, I have also glimpsed many hawks flying high up in the sky."

The Dúnadan eyes Gandalf knowingly, speaking in a somber tone for all to hear. "I think we ought to move again this evening. Hollin is no longer wholesome for us. It is being watched."

"In that case, so is the Redhorn gate," Gandalf grunts, pursing his lips as the implications of the news lie visibly upon his brow. "And how we can get over that without being seen, I cannot imagine. But we will think of that when we must. As for moving with night's coming, I'm afraid you are right."

The news settles about as well as one might expect, though no one complains, except some of the Hobbits; aside for the cold, none are so fatigued as to hamper our pace, beyond what I would expect from creatures barely half my size.

I pity them. For all their affinity for the land, they simply aren't built for cross-country trekking.

As I understand it, the only reason Merry and Pippin joined out company anyway was out of a loyalty for Frodo and Sam, but not for the first time do I wonder if they may have had no idea how difficult this quest would be.

I mean, in all fairness, I didn't – and still don't – either, but I'm not the one suffering for my choice.

--

Nothing further happened that day, save Pippin's complaining of 'what a plague and a nuisance' our newfound care seemed to be, what with our inability to light fires and thereby cook hot food. Since then, murders of wandering crows would pass over from time to time in the daylight, and only after the sun sheds the last rays of its light in the distant West do we take to the road once again.

In my many campaigns against the Darkness, its adherents and enablers, I've not for so long felt the compulsion to travel by moonlight alone; certainly, I've snuck around in the dark for one reason or another, but to swap my nights and days for such a trek as this is something quite novel to me. Granted, with my sleep schedule as chaotic as it is, the shift hasn't been entirely unpleasant.

For certain, daylight has its beauty. But when the trees grow sparse and the road opens up under the full light of the waning moon, I'm treated to a vista quite unlike any I've seen before. There's something to be said for new perspectives.

With the new moon perhaps only days away, our dark cloaks keep us all but invisible to all eyes not attuned to the infrared spectrum. Yet, even among animals, those with such sight are long put to sleep by this hour.

Thus did we walk with silence between us, only the sounds of clattering gear, crushing of leaf and blade of grass, or shifting of gravel to be heard. Seldom do we speak too loudly, and then only when necessary, but the murmurs of conversation can be heard now and again, when good sense compels us to remember not to laugh too forcefully at a joke or a story.

--

It is the second night after we were first accosted with the prying eyes of the birds, and our way is made a little easier by the manifestation of an ancient road; more a long-traveled dirt path than anything paved. Although Aragorn balked at the idea of using it, prying eyes being what they are, it would lead us directly to the entrance to the gate of the Redhorn, which was the only reasonably accessible entrance to the mountain pass. Considering the composition of our company, it was the path elected for us by our guides.

If the Hobbits think the cold is unpleasant now, wait until they get up into the snow and ice.

As my thoughts drift to those snow-capped peaks looming in the distance, a presence makes itself known to me over my shoulder. It is Legolas, his normally silent footfalls audible by intent as he lengthens his stride to walk by my side. I share a look with him but do not deny his company.

We walk for a ways before he speaks at last, his voice soft and honest, and pleasant to listen to.

"I want to apologize for my question the day before," he begins lugubriously. "It was not my place to explore your nature so publicly, nor to hint at something that mayhap ought to have been private. For that, I am sorry."

Well, everything he says is true… but it won't do to let lingering resentment fester among companions. I think he is honest. At the very least, I haven't known him to be dishonest. And both Gandalf and Aragorn speak well of his character.

"I have naught to hold against you, Legolas," I say at last, opting to call him by name rather than title. "As you say, it would serve you – serve you all – to know I am the least in danger when danger comes. Perhaps it was wrong of me to keep it from you in the first place.

I shake my head with a breathy sigh as I explain. "The folk-tales of my people speak ever-ill of those who possess – or seek to possess – powers like mine. We Guardians do not age, and death is slow to find us. The ephemeral lives of common men are consumed with the desire to live as we do. Free of the fear of death. And there is a stigma upon those who wish too strongly for it."

Legolas nods slowly, seeming to understand a bit of what I mean. He is silent for a moment before raising his voice and asking, "Know you the tale of Númenor and its fall?"

I do, at least in part. It is the land from which the Dúnedain, like Aragorn, hailed.

"A little," I answer. The name has been mentioned many times in reverence and sadness in the course of myriad conversations, and I have leaned only enough to liken its legend to that of ancient Atlantis, marvel of the world and sunk beneath the sea. "I know that it fell, and into the sea no less. From it, the Dúnedain trace their ancestry, do they not?"

The Elf nods in confirmation. "They do. In the waning days of the Second Age, the noble Men of Númenor became fearful of death and made war upon the Valar to claim the Undying Lands for themselves, and to steal from them the secret of eternal life. For their folly, King Ar-Pharazôn and his mighty host were caught and trapped in a labyrinth of stone and Númenor itself was sunk beneath the sea. Only Elendil and those of like mind were spared its destruction and came hither to Middle-Earth to found the sister realms of Arnor and Gondor in ancient days."

Despite his soft voice, ahead I can see Aragorn's head tilt toward us, listening. Though obviously abridged, I wonder what other tidbits of lore the man would add to Legolas' tale; it's his history after all.

"But did not Men in those days live as long as Elves?" I ask, knowing that at some point the lives of Men became contemporarily short as they are today, and comparable to the lifespans of folk back home. "For what reason did they fear death so?"

But it is not the Elf who answers me.

"It is the Gift of Men."

I start as Gandalf speaks up from the head of the column. Evidently, he also has been listening.

Actually, as I take notice, all other conversation has ceased, save ours; all ears are turned towards us.

He continues. "It was their virtue; it was not originally something Men feared. Though they loved their lives in Middle-Earth, they relinquished their spirits gracefully, sometimes gladly, passing into a peaceful sleep, never to wake again in this life."

A pleasant end, by any account. To welcome death as some sort of freedom from the confines of the wearying world… Such a fate is unlikely to befall me; I don't think I've ever heard of a Guardian dying peacefully.

"Men are not as Elves are. Their spirits are not content to stay in the world, and so can find no rest. Instead, their spirits leave the world, unlike Elves who cannot die unless slain by violence or ill chance, or by wearying at last due to the passage of centuries. The first Dark Lord, Morgoth, perverted the perception of the Gift, and Men began to fear and despise it, viewing it not as liberation, but as damnation. It instilled in Man a self-loathing and a denial of the basic nature of their being. They viewed themselves as flawed and sought to resist the intrinsic nature of their creation. In the course of an Age, Sauron took up his master's work, twisting the hearts of Men until Ar-Pharazôn at last sought to take the secret of the Elves' immortality by force."

The wizard sighs deeply, turning back to look at me. In that moment, I see a distinct weariness of his own in his eyes. A sadness and regret that's as palpable as a wave of humidity.

"They were deceived, of course. And the seeds of Sauron's lies which took root in those days have thrived since, ever pervading the hearts of lesser men and teaching them to fear that which they should rightly cherish."

What a quandary. The more men feared death, the quicker their lives became. And yet those who did not fear death, like those Númenorians who came to Middle-Earth with Elendil, still retained vestiges of that nobility with longer lives.

I wonder what Númenorians of eld would have made of we Guardians. Would we have been to them as gods? Or just another target of envy?

Even in my ignorance, I think I was otherwise right to hide the truth.

My parched throat begs a draught of water. I wet my lips with a hum in my throat. "I'd say they got their dues then. Deceived or not, the result is expected."

What fool in their right mind challenges Heaven and expects to win? Or, perhaps it was more akin to Valhalla? The Valar are beings with power beyond the reckoning of mortal Men. Did Sauron promise Ar-Pharazôn power to overcome them? Or we're they led to believe that victory could be obtained by their own hands?

In any case, foolish.

But then again, who am I to judge? We challenged Hell didn't we? Challenged, and overcame.

And what is that final shape? It is a fire without fuel, burning forever, killing death, asking a question that is its own answer, entirely itself. That is what we must become.

Our cause was righteous. Objectively so. I don't doubt the Númenorians must have thought theirs was as well, though they were subsequently proven wrong.

The difference between us is obvious though; we didn't step foot on that dread-vessel as either conquerors or savors. We were just killers. With Light as our weapon, the Vanguard had but to point us in the right direction and unclip the leash. Wind us up like a top and let us go. And lo, we claimed the head of the King.

By the rights of his perverted Sword Logic, his throne was open to us. We could have taken it. We could have been kings and queens of the Deep. But we rejected it. Broke it; that dark rule. We slew the King, and we did not replace him.

As the saying goes, power hates a vacuum, and the Osmium Throne presented a tempting target. We expected that either Savathûn or Xivu Arath would be quick to lay their claims, and true to form, the tricksy sister crawled her way out of the woodwork to subsume his dominion, to moderate success.

Savathûn's a fool if she thinks she can keep Oryx's seat for herself. That throne don't belong to her, am I right?

What do you mean? Oryx is dead; His throne open. Let them fight over his vestigial authority. Makes our job easier.

Ha. Brother, we both know you ain't that stupid. You know exactly what I mean.

I'm sure I don't.

Yeah, I'm sure you do.

I shake my head. That is neither here nor there.

"That may be so," Legolas concedes gently. "It certainly seems to me to be the foolhardy choice. After all, our immortal lives are a part of us, and cannot be imparted to another by any means of magic or mortal contrivance. And that is the true tragedy in my mind. They all died for a lie."

I frown at that. Morgoth or Sauron… such evils are beyond my knowledge, yet their behavior is not so different from any villain I have known. Mankind has suffered many such deceivers in the past, often in the form of kings and emperors, conquerors and so-called 'peace-makers.' A past now all but lost to us in the wake of the Collapse.

But something about Legolas' explanation picked at my brain, and I searched for the elusive thought for a moment before I caught its thread.

"You say that your immortality is not interchangeable, and yet I have read that an Elf named Lúthien gave up her immortality and lived a mortal life."

At that, Legolas' face brightened, seemingly pleased to hear that I was aware of such a story. "Your time in Middle-Earth has been so short, yet thou knowest the Lay of Leithian? I am pleased that you are so studious of my people's history. Though perhaps you do not know all the details. It is indeed so, for in the full telling of the tale, Beren who fiercely loved Lúthien, also known as Tinúviel, and whose love she returned, died after stealing away from Morgoth's very crown a Silmaril – a gem of surpassing beauty which Morgoth coveted jealously. In her grief, she lay down and died with him. And in the Halls of Mandos, she sang a song so wonderous and sorrowful that for the first time Mandos was moved to pity. Seeking the council of Manwë, and thence to Eru Ilúvatar, Mandos presented two choices before her. Lúthien may dwell in Valmar in bliss forever, or she could be restored to life again along with Beren as mortals, dying the death of Men. For her love of Beren, Lúthien chose to live out her mortal days with him, and to thereby die with him."

"So it was a bargain then," I conclude, nodding my head slowly as I set about digesting his abbreviated tale. "It was in exchange for her immortality that she returned from the dead, lover in tow." She didn't simply cast aside her immortality of her own power like I had originally thought. Rather, it was a higher authority which stripped her of it.

"Indeed. A similar choice would be given to her descendants," Gandalf said, picking up where the Elf left off. "Beren and Lúthien's granddaughter Elwing would marry Eärendil in the course of time. But Eärendil being a half-Elf and Elwing a mortal, the Valar were concerned that the intermingling of different fates would cause many problems in the future. Thus their children were given leave to choose which fate suited them best, Elf or Man. Thus did their sons decide, with one choosing Man, and the other remaining an Elf. Those two were in fact Elrond, whom you know, and his brother Elros, who went on to become the first in the line of Kings in Númenor."

I am unable to stop myself from blinking in surprise. Elrond's storied life dated that far back? Moreover, his brother was the progenitor of the Númenorians, Aragorn's bloodline?

What tangled web these Middle-Earthers weave…

But one thing seems strange to me. Why would the Valar be so concerned over whether or not they were of distinct Man or Elfkind? Was there some sort of taboo against interbreeding their species? I pose the same question to Gandalf who shook his head with a queer smile on his face.

"No, certainly not! But the Doom of all peoples is determined by their kinds, and not all are explicitly known to us. For example, the spirits of Men go first to the House of Mandos, but only for a short time. From thence they go out of the world to where we know not. Only the great Eru knows their ultimate destination. Thus, the fates of both Eldar and Edain are sundered at the very last; a distinction in their kind must be established."

"When the wisdom of the Valar failed to come to a determination, it was the One who left the choice of our fates to the individual," Aragorn elaborated. "My ancestor, Elros, chose the fate of Men, and thus his progeny were born of the same race. As Elrond remained an Elf, so too are his children given the choice of their fates."

That is… interesting. A bit beyond my ken to be honest, but nonetheless intriguing trivia. For one, if what Gandalf says is true, then Aragorn and Elrond are distant, distant relatives through Elros. And for another, if what the ranger says is true, then 'the choice' is not some ancient thing that was determined long, long ago, but is a question that is still posed to those who are yet alive; his two sons who I have not met, and the beautiful black-haired beauty I witnessed at the feast before the Council meeting.

I work to recall the intricacies of her features, despite her beauty… I had not thought to commit them to memory.

Surely, I can't be blamed for not having done so; I was preoccupied after all.

"Don't call me Shirley."

The flow of my thoughts are abruptly shattered as Gabriel cackles in my ear, and I resist giving him a look of irritation. Especially since he wouldn't be able to see it anyway.

Gandalf's wizened voice breaks me from my reverie. "In any case, it is well that grievances be settled now, for before us looms the peaks Caradhras, and the start of the way in which we must go."

He gestured, and true enough, the sky was lightened by pre-dawn's coming enough to reveal the ominous silhouette of the mountains ahead of us, vast and spanning from the northernmost reaches of the world down and into to the very heart of Gondor.

Our path would take us up and over its ice-capped peaks and then down the other side into Drimrill Dale. From there, we should face no more mountains until we reach the boarders of Mordor itself.

Not that I necessarily dislike mountains; I wouldn't have climbed to the heights of Felwinter Peak for bragging rights if I did. They have their uses and their majesty. But something in my gut doesn't sit right… I can't explain it. The sight of the great stony heap picks at my nerves. Perhaps it's the voice of instinct. Perhaps its my own uncertainty. I don't know.

I bristle as a freezing wind gusts through our company, passing down from the mountains afore us and across their jagged slopes.

Somehow I don't think this will be the most pleasant leg of our journey.

--

Galadriel was.

A state of being, acknowledged and aware.

The world around her was nothing, a vivid vision, a thin veneer that lay over her unwaking eyes

Yet it existed in her mind, or perhaps she existed in it, somewhere, or somewhen else.

She was in it, it was around her, and it was other.

She walked in silent, amethyst halls of etched crystal, arching stonework the color of bleached bone was smooth beneath her naked feet, and the arching ceiling of the galleries she walked yawned high into shadow above her head.

Around her figures walked, black and formless like wraiths, heedless of her presence, their voices a buzzing nothingness that filled her ears with wonder. She could not touch, nor understand them, yet she walked on without concern, seemingly invisible and intangible to those around her. Only an observer of a moment plucked out of elsewhen and elsewhere.

She didn't know why or to where she went, only that it felt right to go.

Through mazing halls, up dazzling stairs and down foreboding pits she walked, now and again taking in the garbled speech of her unwitting audience, pondering their uncertain forms, like wisps of smoke in thickest fog.

Secrets flowed through the halls like water in a stream, like wind over mountains, traded and hoarded as currency. Now and again, she heard a word or two, clear as intoning bells: guest, danger, plan, queen, curse, corrupted, killer… In the fleeting moment she heard a word, she knew its meaning, the depth of its purpose, the subject of its speech. And in the next blink, she couldn't summon even the faintest recollection. Like a precious memory, long forgotten, struggling to fight its way to the forefront of her mind with every invocation.

With every step her limbs dragged, as if trudging through the thickest mud: weightless, as if the world accosted her with only the tiniest mote of its weight. Every step took all of her strength, yet she never felt like she was being held back. It was simply the nature of this place.

She walked on, her passage marked only by the ticking of the eons that lived between each moment. It felt almost as if time didn't exist here, or that if it did, it mattered as much as a single drop of rain in the vast blue oceans. Like faintly glowing embers in the noctilucent canvas of the starlit sky.

Thus, long in those wandering ways did she walk, until all that was strange seemed normal again; that is, until she no longer wondered after those things she knew would otherwise be fantastical beyond her ken. And it was in the midst of that newly acclimated normalcy that she alighted upon peculiarity once again.

Among the throngs of shades and shadows, sedulous whispers half heard and half recalled, six certain souls walked with nonpareil purpose. Unlike the roving wisps of undefined black, their garmenture was all but eclipsed by a coifed refulgence, nigh unto blinding in their luminosity.

At the head strode the brightest of them all, grand and glorious, with steps weighted by triumphs aplenty, and sorrowful, unspeakable vicissitudes. Within its light she could descry an ardor of power and conviction, tempered by a vague sense of unbound whimsy. Victory wafted from their bodies as a fog of gold, their bodies awash in its freshly begotten glow.

The vague shapes of many observers shrank away in awe of the six, words of cheer and relief echoing in the din. Great trials had been overcome this day.

Yet though blinding was the radiance of the one who walked ahead of his fellows, her eyes fell unerringly on he who walked last in file. The sixth one's steps were weighted with conquest no less glorious than those at his side, yet his effulgence lacked the surfeit of voluminous golden-white wonder of his companions; trailing at the extremities of the fog drifted acerbic streams of brightest black, shining like spilled ink in beams of sunshine.

Power and presence – something's presence – followed his steps, lingered in his shadow; there, and yet not.

As the eddies of rushing rivers, it seemed to wind and wend in his wake. Like scraping greed and vanity grasping with vicious claws at the vestiges of their aura. Like a stain that clings to an errant string.

Who would notice it? Who would think to look? Who was capable at all of even seeing it?

Only she.

Galadriel knew in that diluted moment that she was privy to a secret thread so expertly woven into the world's cloth; a truth concealed so carefully, so quietly, so deeply…

But what did it mean? What purpose did her newfound knowledge serve? What providence of powers-that-be granted her such revelation? Who were these shadowed thralls who walked in gleaming halls? Who were these mire-tailed beacons of pillared sunlight who walked upon the highest heights of victory? Who was the brightest that so set himself apart from his fellows? Who was this dimmest to whom her faculties were so inexplicably fixated?

His eyes passed over her unflinchingly, blind and oblivious to her presence. But in the moment his gaze met hers, she was certain she was seen. Not by his eyes, but by something that peered from behind them. A sight keener than his, keener than hers, regarded her from behind his face.

Even when his gaze passed over her, she felt a chilling, lingering sight of that other invisible thing that dogged the sextet's heels.

It was not something that could be seen, even with the inscrutable acuity of her Elven vision – or perhaps it was simply that such talents availed her naught in the bounds of these myriad halls. But it could be tasted with the vaguest vestiges of awareness. Perhaps she was to it as it was to her, a mere phantom only faintly perceived.

Then a voice.

A delicate tone so sweet and soft and rimmed with sharpened teeth…

Have you come to see my friends?

It spoke not with words, but with knowledge and hunger.

Aren't they beautiful, majestic murderers? So full of vim and vigor, of audacity and grandeur! But these are mine. And they are perfect.

The formless voice drifted around her like a coiling snake that bound her limbs with words of unbreakable force.

Galadriel wanted to shout, to scream, to break free and cast away the malevolence that encircled her but-

I'll grant you leave, curious little thing that you are; I see what desire drives you. I will grant you succor. For the desirous hope of thy heart is also theirs.

The vastness of the halls fell away, and only shadow and light remained. Shadow, light, and a vast, looming doom.

One wish granted deserves another.

And Galadriel awoke.

Last edited: Mar 22, 2023

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Black Lister

Mar 19, 2022

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Threadmarks Chapter 12: The Redhorn

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Black Lister

Apr 16, 2022

#268

The sun rose as fast the mountain itself, looming ever higher in the sky and in our eyes as our footfalls carried us closer and closer. The cold grew brisker and the mountain's presence hung heavier.

At Boromir's suggestion, each of us was bid to collect bundles of wood and kindling from what flora remained along the path to the Red Horn. It wasn't much, but we managed to laden ourselves and Bill the pony with enough to hopefully last the trek over its snowy peaks. Gandalf assented to the plot but warned that we mustn't use light any fires unless it was a choice between fire and death. I would do my best to expel what heat I may as we climbed, but the whipping winds at the higher elevations would make moot any warmth I might conjure.

The course we take appears to me to be less of a path than a makeshift parkour of a twisted, climbing pathway that is often blocked by fallen stones and in many places nearly disappears.

What a cheery climb this will be...

I say that 'the sun rose as fast as the mountain' though you would never guess it from the way the thick clouds above so heavily veil the celestial body's light and warmth. And into that veil Caradhras pierces high above, looming. Indomitable.

The day passes in agony as we struggle our way up to the great mountain's knees, by which time the sky is darkening again; the only indication of the sun's passage in the sky. The narrow path winds tighter under a sheer wall of cliffs to the left, over which Caradhras' grim flanks towers into the gloom. On our right is a yawning void of nothing were the land falls away into a ravine, the depths of which remain unnervingly out of sight.

Not a word of conversation is shared between us, so focused are we on our footing. Only at the peak of a sharp slope does Gandalf stop for a moment as we catch our breath. Samwise opts to break our silence first. "Snow's all right on a fine morning, but I like to be in bed while it's falling. I wish this lot would go off to Hobbiton! Folk might welcome it there."

I huff an amused breath at the portly Hobbit's dry sarcasm, nodding silently in assentation. Memories of climbing Fellwinter Peak assault me with every breath of piercing cold, pure air. I blink away the flakes that smack into my face. Already the snow is up to our ankles.

"This is what I feared," Gandalf says, the cold doing nothing to shake his commanding voice. "What say you now, Aragorn?"

"That I feared it too," the Ranger replies, "but less than other things. I knew the risk of snow, thought it seldom falls heavily so far south, save high up in the mountains. But we are not high yet; we are still far down, where the paths are usually open all winter."

"I wonder if this is a contrivance of the Enemy," says Boromir. "They say in my land that he can govern the storms in the Mountains of Shadow that stand upon the borders of Mordor. He has strange powers and many allies."

"His arm has grown long indeed," adds Gimli, "if he can draw snow down from the North to trouble us here three hundred leagues away."

"His arm has grown long," Gandalf capped dismally, a mirthless, trying sneer dragging at his lips.

--

Frodo was bent most in half as he huddled against the storm of snow with his kinsmen, bolstered as they were by the broad frames of the tall folk who flanked them protectively. Even so, the snow was building, and the wind rousing itself for another round of buffeting. In the brief minutes they held respite, the snow was already growing around their legs.

The command was given to continue, and on they tramped. As they did, the storm resumed in full force and fury, nearly tearing them from the meager path they strode. The wind whistled and the snow became a blinding blizzard. Soon even Boromir found it hard to keep going, dauntless as he was. Pippin was dragging behind and Gimli, stout as any dwarf could be, was grumbling as he trudged. For his part, Frodo's feet felt like lead.

So thick was the storm that even in the eve of day so high above the earth, not a shred of sunlight could be seen through it, leaving them in the natural, stormy dusk.

Or unnatural, as Sam seemed to complain. "It don't seem right Mr. Frodo," he complained as he lent an arm to pull the Ringbearer along. "As strange a storm as I've ever seen! On and off, and on and off again. Its mean enough to give me hope of it letting up only to pick back up again with a vengeance. It's like it's out to douse my mood, it is."

Frodo agreed, but not with words, lest he contribute to the moody pall that pervaded their Fellowship. Worse than the wind, every so often, the sound of booming thunder echoed in the ravines and against the walls of the mountain, though no flashes of lightning followed. Instead, it could be heard and felt as great stones fell past them from above, nigh on to striking them. The booms signaled their coming and going.

As if in explanation, Aragorn spoke loud enough to be heard by the whole party. "There are many evil and unfriendly things in the world that have little love for those that go on two legs, and yet are not in league with Sauron, but have purposes of their own. Some have been in this world longer than he."

"Caradhras was called Cruel, and had an ill name long years ago, when rumor of Sauron had not been heard in these lands," added Gimli.

In this way they continued for as long as they could until, as one, they stopped, their ears pricked by eerie noises in the darkness around them. At first Frodo wondered if it wasn't just his mind playing tricks on him, especially in his fatigued state. But Boromir spoke up, saying, "We cannot go further tonight. Let those call it the wind who will; there are fell voices on the air and those stones are aimed at us!"

"I do call it the wind," said Aragorn. "But that does not make what you say untrue."

"It matters little who is the enemy, if we cannot beat off his attack," said Gandalf, casting off snow from his great grey cloak. Ahead of him, Legolas stood atop the snow as if he were weightless, his eyes looking out to pierce the gloom. The blackened steel of Lazarus' armor had turned to a ghostly white, and the wide wings of his helm were the only feature of his that indicated to Frodo whither the younger wizard was looking. His shrouded gaze seemed to linger often on he and his fellow halflings, especially on Frodo himself. Little wonder, he realized, as he was the Ringbearer after all.

Lazarus' voice was nearly drowned by the wind. "If I may have the van, I can make the way easier for those who follow. It will be slow going but it will be easier."

Gandalf regarded him a moment. "Very well, but cast no light if it can be helped. Foe or no, we need not announce our passage openly."

Lazarus considered for a moment. "I can manage it, but it will take longer."

"Slow progress is tolerable so long as it is easier," Pippin complained. "The alternative is no progress that is made yet harder."

Frodo was inclined to agree with his kinsman. So did Boromir.

"This will be the death of the halflings, Gandalf. It is useless to sit here until the snow goes over our heads. We must do something to save ourselves. Who cares for light in this place? If there are any watchers that can endure this storm, then they can't see us, fire or no."

As they argued amongst each other, a great sleepiness came over Frodo; and felt himself sinking fast into a warm and hazy dream. He thought a fire was heating his toes, and out of the shadows on the other side of the hearth he heard Bilbo's voice speaking.

'I don't think much of your diary,' he said. 'Snowstorms on January the twelfth: there was no need to come back to report that!'

'But I wanted rest and sleep, Bilbo,' Frodo answered with an effort, when he felt himself shaken, and he came back painfully to wakefulness. Boromir had lifted him off the ground, out of a nest of snow.

"Give them this," said Gandalf, searching in his pack and drawing out a leathern flask. "Just a mouthful each – for all of us. It is very precious. It is miruvor, the cordial of Imladris. Elrond gave it to me at our parting. Pass it round!"

As soon as Frodo had swallowed a little of the warm and fragrant liquor he felt a new strength of heart, and the heavy drowsiness left his limbs. The others also revived and found fresh hope and vigor. But the snow did not relent. It whirled about them thicker than ever, and the wind blew louder.

"I will take the lead then," Lazarus said, shifting to the front of the column. Holding his hands out, a furnace-like heat surged from his body, the drifts in front of him melting into slush, and the very snow on his shoulders to dissolved like the vanishing mist of a damp summer morning. As he moved, slowly as he predicted, the melted snow quickly sought to freeze into ice, though not quick enough to impede the group's passage.

Thus their way was made much easier for a time, though the troubles of the storm and the careening rubble plagued them all the same. By good fortune, the concept of time seemed to pass Frodo by, and it wasn't until Aragorn spoke up that he realized a significant amount of it must have come and gone while he was unaware.

"The night is getting old," the ranger said. "The dawn is not far off."

"If any dawn can pierce these clouds," remarked Gimli.

Boromir stepped out of the line and stared up into the blackness. "The snow is growing less," he said, "and the wind is quieter."

Frodo gazed wearily at the flakes still falling out of the dark sky, but for a long time he could see no sign of their slackening. Then suddenly, as sleep was beginning to creep over him again, he was aware that the wind had indeed fallen, and the flakes were becoming larger and fewer. Very slowly a dim light began to grow. At last the snow stopped altogether.

As the light grew stronger, it showed a silent shrouded world. Below their path were white humps and domes and shapeless deeps beneath which the path that they had trodden was altogether lost; but the heights above were hidden in great clouds still heavy with the threat of snow.

Gimli looked up and brushed his beard free of clinging white. "Caradhras has not forgiven us," he said. "He has more snow yet to fling at us if we go on. The sooner we go back and down the better."

Despite what progress has been made, to the Dwarf's words, all agreed. Save one.

"I am not yet convinced to turn aside." Lazarus spoke with confidence and determination, but the rest of the Fellowship was not so confident. Their retreat was now more difficult, to be sure; it might well prove impossible. Only a short distance behind them snow was scooped and piled by the wind into great drifts against the cliff, as if to replenish what Lazarus wiped away.

"If Gandalf and Lazarus were to go before us with a bright flame, heedless of sight, they might melt a path for you."

'You,' Legolas said for the storm had troubled him little, and he alone of the company remained still light of heart.

"If Elves could fly over mountains, they might fetch the Sun to save us," answered Gandalf. "But I must have something to work on. I cannot burn snow."

"I believe we can yet make it over, Gandalf," Lazarus said. "Caradhras is not unconquerable."

At last, the elder wizard planted his staff in the snow. "We shall rest here for the moment. Light a fire if you can, and we shall consider the marathon of the mountain."

The many faggots of wood and kindling were gathered together and sought to make a flame of. But it passed beyond the skill of Elf or even Dwarf to strike a flame that would hold in the much weakened but still present air or catch in the wet fuel.

At last, reluctantly Gandalf himself stook a hand. Picking up a bundle, he held it aloft for a moment, and then with a word of command, 'naur an edraith ammen!' he thrust the end of his staff into the midst of it. At once a great spout of green and blue flame sprang out, and the wood flared and sputtered. "There. If there are any to see, then I at least am revealed to them," he said. "I have written 'Gandalf is here' in signs that all can read from Rivendell to the mouths of Anduin."

But the Company cared no longer for watchers or unfriendly eyes. Their hearts rejoiced to see the light of the fire. The wood burned merrily; and though all around it snow hissed, and pools of slush crept under their feet, they warmed their hands gladly at the blaze. There they stood, stooping in a circle round the little dancing and blowing flames. A red light was on their tired and anxious faces.

Alas, their comfort was not to be allowed.

Legolas was the first to notice it, his head twitching suddenly to gaze out across the range beyond. "Hark! I hear something. Not the howling of wind, but a fell voice upon the wind!"

In a startled stupor, each of the Company turned their ears to the skies and the air, seeking the same thing the Elf described. At first, Frodo could hear nothing out of the ordinary, until after several second something akin to an echo of a single word rolled over the mountain range. It was followed by a second and a third, each as unintelligible as the the one before.

Gandalf was up in a moment, staff in hand. "It is Saruman!"

A litany of words left left the wizard's lips, incantations Frodo realized as the ancient language of the elves echoed across the mountain in contention with the voice beyond, crisp and clear, booming and full of power.

But it seemed whatever duel of wizardry was commenced across the distance, Gandalf was a step behind.

Dark clouds gathered over their heads with unnatural speed, swirling and churning and flashing with bolts of lightning.

At once, a streak of forked light arced out and struck high upon the mountain, loosening great gouts of ice and rock and snow.

"Get down!"

As one, they pressed themselves against the walls of the mountain. If they were lucky, the debris would pass them by or over. But as Frodo chanced to look up, it seemed to him they would be right in the avalanche's path.

Suddenly a dark shade of light stretched across the edge of the mountain's face, against which the avalanche crashed with all its fury. Yet for all its weight and power, it was befuddled by the sudden intervention.

A groan of effort pointed Frodo to Lazarus who stood apart from the wall, arms outstretched as if to ward away the summoned debris. Above, what great rocks were dislodged from their place pressed against the barrier, their edges searing red hot, brighter and brighter until all was hissing steam and vapor, and even the forms of the great boulders were faded, like sugar cubes sinking into warm water.

When the rumbling was passed and the clattering of ice and snow ended, Lazarus at last lowered his arms and the shadowy shield above their heads drifted away like so much mist.

"He is trying to bring down the mountain," Boromir cried. "Gandalf, we must turn back!"

"Forward or back, our path is wrought with danger. Let it be forward!" Lazarus argued.

A second crack thunder above rumbled in Frodo's chest.

A flash of light lashed out, this time aiming not far above their heads. But as the light came down it bent strangely, turning until it crashed down amongst them with a cacophonous boom. But the light did not reach either snow or stone. Instead, it flashed and flickered into Lazarus' palm, flickering like a wreath of cold white light around his fist. Then, with a flick of motion, the lightning which fell into Lazarus' palm was cast back into the sky, and of a sudden the swirling clouds burst apart as if denied their congregation.

It happened in an instant, and Frodo was nigh blinded by the white light's intensity.

Silence descended upon the Fellowship following the exchange of arcane knowledge and power until Gandalf spoke once again.

"Saruman strikes at us directly while Caradhras beleaguers us. We cannot challenge both gauntlets," he declared with an assurance born of experience. His eyes however rested upon Lazarus. "We cannot forge ahead while beset on all sides, even with our strength. Lightning and avalanches, these are but a taste of what force our enemies can bring to bear."

But Lazarus did not back down. "You would turn back now? Success is so near at hand! That we are so beset on all sides is proof of this!"

"Perhaps that is so, and perhaps it is not. But we must consider our companions as well. Can you guarantee in our triumph the safety of all in our Company?"

"Can you guarantee the safety of all in our Company in your retreat?"

A clash of wills sparked between the wizards and nobody dared to interrupt, save at least for Aragorn who grasped Lazarus' shoulder and turned him aside.

"There are other paths than this. Whether safer or nay is out of the question, but they do exist. Here we are too exposed."

As if to emphasize his words, lightning crackled again in the sky close above, the clouds returning to roil overhead. Their position could hardly be called tenable; as Sam might say 'If this is shelter, then one wall and no roof make a house.'

For a time, Lazarus was silent, until at last he nodded solemnly, brushing Aragorn's hand from his body. "Then I will take the rear and ward off any enfeeblements."

"But the way we came is already overladen with snow," Merry pointed out eyeing the path that brought them up the mountain.

"Well, when heads are at a loss, bodies must serve, as we say in my country," Boromir said rousing himself with an indomitable confidence. "The strongest of us must seek a way. See! Though all is snow-clad, our path, as we came up, turned about that shoulder of rock down yonder. It was there that the snow first began to burden us. If we could reach that point, maybe it would prove easier beyond. It is no more than a furlong off, I guess."

"Then let us force a path thither, you and I!" said Aragorn.

The Dúnadan was the tallest of the Company, but Boromir, little less in height, was broader and heavier in build. He led the way, and Aragorn followed him. Slowly they moved off, and we soon toiling heavily. In places the snow was breast-high, and often Boromir seemed to be swimming or burrowing with his great arms rather than walking.

Legolas watched them for a while with a smile upon his lips, and then he turned to the rest of them.

"The strongest must seek a way, say you? But I say: let ploughmen plough, but choose an otter for swimming, and for running light over grass and leaf, or over snow – an Elf."

With that he sprang forth nimbly. "Farewell!" he said to Gandalf. "I go to find the Sun!" Then swift as a runner over firm sand he shot away, and quickly overtaking the toiling men, with a wave of his hand he passed them, and sped into the distance, and vanished round the rocky turn.

--

Gandalf and Lazarus spent their time unmaking what storm clouds formed over head though some means of magic beyond Frodo's ken while the Hobbits huddled together in a circle, hoping to keep out the wind while Gimli stood watch… though what there was to see, Frodo couldn't guess.

It was a bit of time later that Legolas returned, followed swiftly by Boromir and Aragorn.

"Well, I have not brought the Sun," the Elf cried as he ran up. "She is walking in the blue fields of the South, and a little wreath of snow on this Redhorn hillock troubles her not at all. But I have brought back a gleam of good hope for those who are doomed to go on feet. There is the greatest wind-drift of all just beyond the turn, and there our Strong Men were almost buried. They despaired, until I returned and told them that the drift was little wider than a wall. And on the other side the snow suddenly grows less, while further down it is no more than a white coverlet to cool a Hobbit's toes."

"Ah, it is as I said," growled Gimli. "It was no ordinary storm. It is the ill will of Caradhras. He does not love Elves and Dwarves, and that drift was laid to cut off our escape."

"But happily your Caradhras has forgotten that you have Men with you," said Boromir, who came up at that moment. "And doughty Men too, if I may say it; though lesser men with spades might have served you better. Still, we have thrust a lane through the drift; and for that all here may be grateful who cannot run as light as Elves."

"But how are we to get down there, even if you have cut through the drift?" asked Pippin, voicing the thought of all the hobbits.

"Have hope!" replied Boromir. "I am weary, but I still have some strength left, and Aragorn too. We will bear the little folk. The others no doubt will make shift to tread the path behind us. Come, Master Peregrin! I will begin with you."

And with that he reached down and lifted the hobbit up. "Cling to my back! I shall need my arms," he said and strode forward. Aragorn with Merry came behind. They came at length to the great drift. It was flung across the mountain-path like a sheer and sudden wall, and its crest, sharp as if shaped with knives, reared up more than twice the height of Boromir; but through the middle a passage had been beaten, rising and falling like a bridge. On the far side Merry and Pippin were set down, and there they waited with Legolas for the rest of the Company to arrive.

After a while Boromir returned carrying Sam. Behind in the narrow but now well-trodden track came Gandalf, leading Bill with Gimli perched among the baggage. Last came Aragorn who carried Frodo ahead as Lazarus followed behind, his eyes to the heavens to ward off what powers might be hurled their way. But hardly had Frodo touched the ground when with a deep rumble there rolled down a fall of stones and slithering snow. The spray of it half blinded the Company as they crouched against the cliff. Again Lazarus waved his hands and a dark shadow of light hung over them as an umbrella, keeping the worst of it from falling on their heads. When the air cleared again, Frodo saw that the path was blocked behind them.

"Enough, enough!" cried Gimli to the mountain upon which they trod. "We are departing as quickly as we may!"

And indeed with that last stroke the malice of the mountain seemed to be expended, as if Caradhras was satisfied that the invaders had been beaten off and would not dare return. The threat of the snow lifted; the clouds began to break and the light grew broader.

As Legolas had reported, they found that the snow became steadily more shallow as they went down, so that even the hobbits could trudge along. Soon they all stood once more on the flat shelf at the head of the steep slope where they had felt the first flakes of snow the night before.

The morning was now far advanced. From the high place the looked back westwards over the lower lands. Far away in the tumble of country that lay at the foot of the mountain was the dell from which they had started to climb the pass.

Frodo's legs ached. He was chilled to the bone and hungry; and his head was dizzy as he thought of the long and painful march downhill. Black specks swam before his eyes. He rubbed them, but the black specks remained. In the distance below him, but still high above the lower foothills, dark dots were circling in the air.

"The birds again!" said Aragorn, pointing down.

"That cannot be helped now," resigned Gandalf. "Whether they are good or evil, or have nothing to do with us at all, we must go down at once. Not even on the knees of Caradhras will we wait for another night-fall!"

A cold wind flowed down behind them, as they turned their backs on the Redhorn Gate, and stumbled wearily down the slope.

Caradhras had defeated them.

--

It is evening, and the grey light is once again waning fast ere we halt for the night. My legs ache but I do not let my troubles appear on my face. We are all quite tired, and even Aragorn, ranger and bearer of an endurance beyond ordinary men, is quite fatigued. The mountains are veiled in deepening dusk and the wind is cold. At least now I may provide some warmth, as the wind is not too strong.

I signal to the hobbits to gather round, and they take my intention as their faces light up at the notion of warmth. Gandalf spares the rest one more mouthful each of the miruvor of Rivendell. I decline the offer, as I know it would be better used to bolster the little ones in our journey, and I am a Guardian; even if I starve to death, and I can come back invigorated. We eat what morsels we may, absent a fire.

Still hungry.

The general morale is low, having tried and failed our first major endeavor. Though I maintain that we could have conquered the Redhorn had we pressed on, I know that, realistically, it would likely be at the expense of my companions. I know firsthand the folly of wading into battle too eagerly, heedless of those I am charged with protecting.

This difference is Lazarus, they died knowing you failed them. You will live to remember it.

Tempted though I was to push the party onward, Aragorn's reason won out in the end. Against the elements and magic leveled against us, I do not know if I could forge a path ahead and protect them all, even with Gandalf's help. Indeed, Gandalf revealed a limitation of his own; by admitting that he cannot burn snow, I deduce his power is functionally acausal; it must obey a certain criterion of rules. If I were to make a comparison, it would be like the ability to create ice, but it must be conjured from the moisture of the air. Paracausal powers, like mine, do not need to interact with reality at all. A fireball in my hand hot enough to liquify space-age polymers needs no fuel to burn on its own.

Until today, I have not witnessed an example of Gandalf's magic. Now that I have, I have a stronger grasp on my position in this world.

The grey wizard in question calls a council.

"We cannot, of course, go on again tonight," he says. "The attack on the Redhorn Gate has tired us out, and we must rest here for a while."

"And then where are we to go?" asks Frodo.

"We still have our journey and our errand before us," answers Gandalf. "We have no choice but to go on, or to return to Rivendell."

I see Pippin's face brighten visible at the mere mention of return to the Elven city. Merry and Sam look up hopefully. Frodo however appears troubled.

"I wish I was back there," he admits with a forlorn expression. "But how can I return without shame – unless there is indeed no other way, and we are already defeated?"

It is the right attitude to have; it would not do for the Ringbearer to be so easily discouraged or swayed.

"You are right, Frodo," Gandalf says, placing a great knotted hand on the hobbit's shoulder. "To go back is to admit defeat and face worse defeat to come. If we go back to Rivendell now, then the Ring must remain there: we shall not be able to set out again. Then, sooner or later, the city will be besieged, and after a brief and bitter time it will be destroyed. The Ringwraiths are deadly enemies, but they are only shadows yet of the power and terror they would possess if the Ruling Ring was on their master's hand again."

Frodo's face is downcast. Clearly it is not the answer he was hoping to hear, not that I blame him any. And yet... I see an undeniable resolution gleaming in his untried eyes.

"Then we must go on, if there is a way," he says with a sigh.

Sam, charged to aid Frodo wheresoever he goes, unhappily sinks into the gloom. It is not the answer he hoped to hear either.

"There is a way that we may attempt." Gandalf admits after a solemn pregnant pause, his voice so slow and clear, eyes like piercing coals. "I thought from the beginning, when first I considered this journey, that we should try it. But it is not a pleasant way, and I have not spoken of it to the Company before. Aragorn was against it, until the pass over the mountains has at least been tried."

"If it is a worse road than the Redhorn Gate, then it must be evil indeed," says Merry, rubbing some feeling back into his frozen fingers. "But you had better tell us about it and let us know the worst at once."

With a sigh, Gandalf closes his eyes. His wide-brimmed, gray head shadows his face as he leans upon his gnarled wooden staff. "The road that I speak of leads to the Mines of Moria."

At once the mood darkens to match the setting sun behind the veil of gray. Only Gimli's gaze rises with a smoldering fire burning in his eyes. On all the others, a dread has fallen at the very mention of the name. It seems even to the hobbits it was a legend of fear. I know it only as the faint ringing of the proverbial bell in my mind-palace, a footnote filed away as point on a map that my eyes must have once passed over. A city built under the mountains.

"The road may lead to Moria, but how can we hope that it will lead through Moria?" Aragorn counters from the silence.

Boromir agrees. "It is a name of ill omen," he says. "Nor do I see the need to go there. If we cannot cross the mountains, let us journey southward, until we come to the Gap of Rohan, where men are friendly to my people, taking the road that I followed on my way hither. Or we might pass by and cross the Isen to Langstrand and Lebennin, and so come to Gondor from the regions nigh to the sea."

But even I can see the faults with such a plan. "Did you not hear Gandalf at the meeting?" I ask. "Saruman resides in Isengard, which is near to the mouth of the Gap. What friendship may be found in its inhabitants will doubtlessly be matched by numerous foes."

"Things have changed since you came north, Boromir," Gandalf nods with a grunt, affirming my assertion with a long drawn breath. "I may have business of my own with Saruman ere all is over. But the Ring must not come near Isengard, if that can by any means be prevented. The Gap of Rohan is closed to us while we go with the Bearer."

In this sort of situation, I might otherwise be tempted to offer to act as a decoy, heading north at the Gap to distract Saruman's gaze, but based on what I saw on Caradhras, Saruman's power far outstrips any I have seen from Gandalf, a contemporary; I cannot use the latter to gauge the arcane prowess of the former. That leaves the White Wizard as an unknown, and though I am not averse to facing the unknown, there is no fireteam of Guardians waiting in the wings to avenge me, or to carry the torch in my stead. I cannot act in haste or ignorance.

"As for the longer road," Gandalf continues, "we cannot afford the time. We might spend a year in such a journey, and we should pass through many lands that are empty or harborless. Yet they would not be safe. The watchful eyes of both Saruman and the Enemy are on them. When you came north, Boromir, you were, in the Enemy's eyes, only one stray wanderer from the South and a matter of small concern to him: his mind was busy with the pursuit of the Ring. But you return now as a member of the Ring's Company, and you are in peril as long as you remain with us. The danger will increase with every league that we go south under the naked sky.

He turns to the rest of our Company. "Since our open attempt on the mountain-pass, our plight has become more desperate, I fear. I see now little hope if we do not soon vanish from sight for a while and cover our trail. Therefore, I advise that we should go neither over the mountains, nor around them, but under them. That is a road, at any rate, that the Enemy will least expect us to take."

"Do we know that?" I ask, eyeing Gandalf. Even if I agree with his logic, I would be a fool not to at least play at devil's advocate in such a situation. "Wouldn't his gaze be set upon all paths, likely and unlikely?"

Gandalf pursed his lips and nodded hesitantly. "Possibly, yes. If there are Orcs there, it may prove ill for us, that is true. But most of the Orcs of the Misty Mountains were scattered or destroyed in the Battle of the Five Armies. The Eagles report that Orcs are gathering again from afar; but there is a hope that Moria is still free."

The Battle of the Five Armies. A political catastrophe between Elves, Dwarves and Men averted only by the advent of two armies of Orcs. The late-coming fifth army was a flight of Great Eagles whose arrival put the nail in the Orcs' proverbial (and very literal) coffin. Records indicate that peace was made between the feuding Men, Dwarves and Elves afterwards, but I wonder if peace would have been possible if it weren't for the Orcs' untimely intrusion.

Leave it to the petty to squabble amongst themselves. And leave it to the foolish to unite the petty against them.

"There is even a chance that Dwarves are there," Gandalf continues, "and that in some deep hall of his fathers, Balin, son of Fundin, may be found. However it may prove, one must tread the path that need chooses!"

Gimli stands of a sudden with firm resolve in his Dwarven face and burly voice. "I will tread the path with you, Gandalf! I will go and look on the halls of Durin, whatever may wait there – if you can find the doors that are shut."

"Good Gimli!" Gandalf says with a grin, clapping the dwarf on the shoulder thankfully. "You encourage me. We will seek the hidden doors together. And we will come through. In the ruins of the Dwarves, a dwarf's head will be less easy to bewilder than Elves or Men or Hobbits. Yet it will not be for the first time that I have been to Moria. I sought there long for Thráin, son of Thrór, after he was lost. I passed through, and I came out again alive!"

"I too once passed the Dimrill Gate," mutters Aragorn quietly, "but though I also came out again, the memory is very evil. I do not wish to enter Moria a second time."

"And I don't wish to enter it even once," says Pippin.

"Nor me," mutters Sam.

"Of course not!" agrees Gandalf with a look of total sympathy. "Who would? But the question is: who will follow me if I lead you there?"

"I will," repeats Gimli eagerly.

"I will," agrees Aragorn. "You followed my lead almost to disaster in the snow, and have said no word of blame. I will follow your lead now – if this last warning does not move you. It is not of the Ring, nor of us others that I am thinking now, but of you Gandalf. And I say to you: if you pass the doors of Moria, beware!"

Those words catch my ear distinctly. A warning to Gandalf of all people? What manner of danger might be a threat to a wizard like Gandalf, yet not so much of one to the rest of the company? I raise an eyebrow at Aragorn, but his eyes are on Gandalf, and Gandalf's are on him.

"I will not go," says Boromir, breaking the sudden silence. "Not unless the vote of the whole company is against me. What do Legolas and the little folk say? The Ring-bearer's voice surely should be heard."

"I do not wish to go to Moria," Legolas says simply, the same as one might express their displeasure at the notion of political disagreement, or a visit to the in-laws. But his face spoke of a more mortal kind of fear. An eerie dread. A haunting evil.

The hobbits say nothing, at least at first. Pippin looks to Merry, Merry looks to Sam, Sam looks to Frodo, and Frodo seems to look within himself. Even among his own kin, Frodo is looked to with respect and deference... I know what a weight that brand of responsibility can be.

At last though, he speaks.

"I do not wish to go," he says firmly before quickly adding, "but neither do I wish to refuse the advice of Gandalf. I beg that there should be no vote, until we have slept on it. Gandalf will get votes easier in the light of the morning than in this cold gloom." He wrapped his cloak tighter about himself. "Oh, how the wind howls!"

At these words, all fall into silent thought. The wind hisses among the rocks and trees, and the howling and wailing round us echoes in the empty spaces of the night.

It a conundrum to be sure. But I do not think it an option to return to Rivendell. If the Ring be so evil as to doom the world should Sauron reclaim it, then simply holding it in a castle until all are overwhelmed by Orcs and wraiths and other foul things, and the Ring is ultimately taken is no choice at all. Hell, Boromir's initial suggestion to use it as a weapon against Sauron is preferable to simply waiting in resignation for an inevitable end.

Damn the consequences.

They say that whatever the purity of the will of the wielder, the Ring will inevitably corrupt it, twist it, turn it this way and that until at last it finds its way back to Sauron's hand.

Ingenious when you think about it. If such a thing could be duplicated, but used for good…

By your laws, I and all my followers are evil. Evil. Since that first molecule coiled in the primordial sea, not one Earthborn thing has known a monster like me.

But did you know that I created you?

Yet, I already have something like that, don't I?

I, the defector, the destroyer, the one who takes.

A twinge of awareness in my brain alerts me. A distant tether of knowledge shared.

I stand and face the distant dark.

They are coming.

It takes a short moment before Aragorn bolts to his feet. "How the wind howls!" he cried, echoing Frodo's words. "It is howling with wolf-voices. The Wargs have come west of the Mountains!"

"Need we wait until morning then?" asked Gandalf as he rose to his feet with a great lean on his staff. "It is as I said. The hunt is up! Even if we live to see the dawn, who now will wish to journey south by night with the wild wolves on his trail?"

"How far is Moria?" asks Boromir, his tone telling me all I need to know about what he thinks of our new predicament.

"There was a door south-west of Caradhras, some fifteen miles as the crow flies, and maybe twenty as the wolf runs," answers Gandalf grimly.

"Then let us start as soon as it is light tomorrow, if we can," says Boromir. "The wolf that one hears is worse than the orc that one fears." A man of action, as he is, procrastination isn't in his nature; if he must make a decision, then he will make it. As a captain of Gondor, such a quality is good for a leader of men. Hesitation can mean death, not only for yourself, but also for your soldiers. Decisiveness almost always wins the day. But next to decisiveness is caution. I am heartened that Boromir has an abundance of both.

"True!" Aragorn vigorously agrees, loosening his sword in his sheath. "But where the warg howls, there also the orc prowls."

--

For their defense in the night, the Company climbed to the top of the small hill under which they had been sheltering. It was crowned with a knot of old and twisted trees, about which lay a broken circle of boulder-stones. In the midst of this they lit a fire, for there was no hope that darkness and silence would keep their trail from discovery by the hunting packs.

Round the fire they sat, and those that were not on guard dozed uneasily. Poor Bill the pony trembled and sweated where he stood. The howling of the wolves was now all around them, sometimes nearer and sometimes further off. In the dead of night, many shining eyes were seen peering over the brow of the hill. Some advanced almost to the ring of stones.

But none dared to step too close. Indeed, in the depths of the darkness beyond, occasional sounds sprang forth as to curdle the blood of the sentinels. Snarling growls, snapping of teeth, and the occasional pained whimper. A great howl broke from the den, as if to signal the beginning of a great hunt.

The sounds increased in frequency in the night, though nothing could been seen from their places upon the hill.

Aragorn was the first to speak. "The wargs act queerly. What do make of them, Legolas?" he asked without turning his gaze away from the ring of stones.

For his part Legolas found it difficult to put into words. "They are unsettled. A dark presence is in these woods. Like the shadow of pale clouds. It attacks unseen, striking down what it may and vanishes beyond my sight."

"What devilry is this?" Boromir asked at the Elf's side, his shield strapped firmly to his offhand. "Do our foes quarrel amongst themselves? All the better for us then, if Evil grow as tired as we."

But Legolas could offer no comfort. "Fatigue is not in its nature. It is tireless and patient, though it seems to be satisfied, for the moment, with hunting our pursuers."

"So long as it comes not too close to us, let it be," Aragorn determined with a grim pragmatism. "Perhaps this is a stroke of good fortune at last, though I am given to doubt."

"Many times have I trod these woods and naught have I seen nor heard of spirits, fair or foul," Gandalf spoke suddenly, drowsiness still in his voice as he awoke from beside the fire and rose to stand next to them. "This is a strange new thing to me. And it does not stray too close, you say?"

"Not that I see, though I doubt my sight is as keen as thine, Gandalf," Legolas answered.

"It is fair enough, I deem," he replied. "Rest now, Legolas. I shall take the next watch."

All about them the darkness grew silent, and no cry came on from the sighing wind.

All the while, Lazarus sat with his back to the fire, elbows planted on his knees. His gifted blade held, sheathed, in both hands. His attentions never left the shadowed forest, his face stony and cold, unseen eyes garbed in ghostly white, piercing into the deep shadows of the forest.

--

When the full light of the morning came, no signs of the wolves were to be found. No signs of living wolves, at least; many a corpse was found torn and broken, twisted and splintered, their viscera spread across the forest carelessly.

Neither Elf nor wizard could spy a shred of the culprit.

"A fell omen I take it," Gandalf said. "Or would do, if a part of me didn't whisper to me with other notions."

"What sort of notions, Gandalf?" Gimli asked, turning a severed head over to reveal how it had been torn from its host. "Any insight of yours is worth hearing."

Gandalf shook his head. "Nay, I will not say yet, for much is yet uncertain to me. But I think there are powers at work that are not wholly against us. That, at least, I will dare to wager."

"'The enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend'," quoted Lazarus as he inspected how a trail of blood seemed to streak up the trunk of a tall tree. "But I'd be willing to risk thinking otherwise in this case, if only to pretend the world isn't out to get us."

"A baseless hope I deem, Lazarus," Boromir said, his sword drawn, though held loosely at his side. "Far from the bastions of Elves, Dwarves, or Men, all that is not transparently friend is inevitably foe."

"Exceptions exist in all things," Gandalf advised. "Though I do not wish to linger long enough to find which is which. Let us eat quickly and go!"

The dead were left to rot in the shade of gnarled trees.

That day the weather changed again, almost as if it was at the command of some power that had no longer any use for snow, since they had retreated from the pass. A power that wished now to have a clear light in which to see from afar those things that moved in the wild. The wind had been turning through north to north-west during the night, and now it failed. The clouds vanished southwards and the sky was opened, high and blue. As they stood upon the hillside, ready to depart, a pale sunlight gleamed over the mountaintops.

"We must reach the doors before sunset," said Gandalf judiciously, "or I fear we shall not reach them at all. It is not far, but our path may be winding, for here Aragorn cannot guide us; he has seldom walked in this country, and only once have I been under the west wall of Moria, and that was long ago."

He pointed away south-eastwards to where the mountains' sides fell sheer into the shadows at their feet. In the distance could be dimly seen a line of bare cliffs, and in their midst, taller than the rest, one great gray wall.

"There it lies. When we left the pass I led you southwards, and not back to our starting point, as some of you may have noticed. It is well that I did so, for now we have several miles less to cross, and haste is needed. Let us go!"

For the first time in our journey, Gimli elects to walk ahead by Gandalf's side, so eager is he to come to Moria; the tramp of his boots are filled with vim, vigor, and anticipation besides. Together they lead our column back towards the mountains. The only road of old to Moria from the west had lain along the course of a stream, the Sirannon, that ran out from the feet of the cliffs near where the doors had stood. I follow behind the pack aside Boromir, with whom I talk at intervals with good conversation. I think at points that Boromir still sees me as a wizard of Gandalf's sort, mysterious and riddled with… well, riddles. So I do my best to be as transparent with him as I may, sharing experiences in battle and remarking on the miracles we both have experienced in war.

"That the Fallen never managed to strike a mortal blow upon your people is a testament to your strengths," the captain says in the course of conversation. "I have no doubt, as the strength of every Man in Gondor is spent in excess to the defense of her lands. I should like to see the city you speak of, the Eye of the Sahara. Or was the city called Richat? You have called it by both names."

"Both apply," I reply. "From a bird's eyes, it would appear to look like a great eye carved upon the land, though it is actually rings within rings of raised earth. In the days before our golden years, it was theorized to once be the site of the capital of an ancient nation which dominated the continent. Alas a great flood came and wiped it all clean, down to its very foundations. When the waters receded, all that was left was a desert grave. When the Traveler came to us and our many nations, efforts were made to rebuild upon the bones of the place, turning it into a city of great abundance once again. In the Dark Age, it became a stronghold against evil."

"And of it you became kings and queens of its lands," Boromir says, though I can't tell if he's exaggerating; I've never once called us royalty. "Or lords, as you have said."

"Warlords, aye. Or Iron Lords depending on who you talk to. In the course of time, offers were made of safe passage to where the Traveler rested in the North. The Iron Lords, for all their good will, did us more harm than good, and made it impossible for us to live in the Eye for much longer. Thus, we five agreed, with great reluctance, to take the Iron Lord's offer of protection, and ceded our lands to the enemy as our people were ferried to safety."

"A dark day that must have been. Many times has the decision to hold or abandon Osgiliath to the enemy been tabled, though we have ever held her. We have done so, and continue to do so, by the blood and courage of Men. And it is that same blood and courage that will see Gondor prevail upon the Dark Lord, or such is my hope. It seems that now that hope is mingled with this Company."

"Is that so bad a thing?" I ask with genuine interest. The countenance and minds of Elves have become moderately familiar to me over the course of my time in Rivendell. Yet it seems between Boromir and Aragorn, the former is the only one eager to speak of the account of the nation and people of Gondor.

"I am a commander of Men," he answers cryptically. "But before that, I am a soldier, and soldiers follow the instructions of their betters. I am not averse to following the path blazed by wizards and Elves, but I do not recognize Aragorn, son of Arathorn as Isildur's heir. The Kings of Gondor's past have availed us naught, and we have done well without them for some time. My father, Denethor, Steward of Gondor, has long governed our people with wisdom and strength greater than any other man alive. I do not deny Aragorn's experience as a northern ranger, but that alone does not make a king, birthright or no."

His voice was low as he spoke so as to share such thoughts with me and me alone, though I wonder if Legolas' hearing could detect it. Maybe even the hobbits… their pointed ears couldn't be for nothing, right?

I take a deep breath and consider a response. "You're right. He has the right to the throne, but he does not have your approval; no king can rule where his subjects reject him. However, I would argue that before he has the right to the throne, he has the right to earn that approval. That, at least, you must acknowledge."

The Gondorian grumbled a bit under his breath, but he eventually nodded. "I will concede that you speak true. Though, I maintain our lack of necessity. If a claim he wishes to stake, then hence I will not overlook his efforts toward it, bitterly though I may do so."

I place a hand on his shoulder with a smile. "An open mind is all that is required of you. I myself am not overly warmed to him, but I am in no position to deny him either. If he is worthy, I am certain he will obtain your approval. I expect we will all have opportunities to prove our qualities ere long."

"Or die trying, like as not." The dismal tone in Boromir's tone belied the firm determination on his face. At odds though they were, his perspective was not unfamiliar to me; he was a man who wished to fight with all his being to do good, to do right. But he was burdened by the despondency of hopelessness. He did not expect to survive. Not that he would go looking for despair, nor carelessly give himself to death, but he did not expect survival.

"All men die, Boromir," I say simply. "Even my kind. The question is 'what are you willing to die for?' Friendship? Power? Wealth?" I allow my question to hang in the air for a moment as he turns to me with a natural defiance in his eyes. "You must decide now what 'thing' would make your death worthwhile."

"And what of you?" He asked… or countered. "Have you found a worthy fate to which you would suffer death with satisfaction?"

I give a short laugh and shake my head at him. "Of course not," I admit, causing him to look upon me in confusion. "I'm not someone who can be satisfied with death of any sort. I tried to; I really did, long ago. But the more I tried to find something worth dying for, the more I found something worth living for."

Indeed, the sweeting memories and emotions of bright days and brighter people warm my breast at the mere thought of them.

"This life is too much of an adventure to be simply satisfied. Too many sights to see; too many places to go; too many secrets of the world to uncover! So I fight for them; for those things which I will yet do. For those places I will yet go. For those people who I have yet to meet."

A genuine smile alights on my face as I speak. It is good to occasionally air one's convictions in agreeable company. "Like your home, mine has many times fallen under siege, and every time we were almost overwhelmed. The battles of Six Fronts and Twilight Gap, the Taken King's incursion, the Red War... I haven't outlived them all by giving in to despair, but rather by keeping my hope for the future brightly kindled."

At my words, Boromir lets out a deep sigh, his eyes turning to the daunting walls of the mountain. "That hope is almost spent now, I fear. The fire of defiance burns hot in my chest, but it is in knowing that the enemy will one day prevail. We have the means to hold him back for a time, but not the room to grow stronger. Meanwhile, the Enemy's strength grows daily, and will continue to do so ere the Ringbearer reaches journey's end."

I do not deny his words, as that appears to be the very case. Sauron is growing stronger by all accounts. And Gondor's geographical location puts it first in line to feel his rejuvenated wrath. Had I the wherewithal to do so, I would gladly summon a battalion of Guardians in Gondor's defense. But that is only wishful thinking. If any other Guardians followed my journey here, I have seen nothing to confirm it.

I am alone. Therefore, strategically speaking, the place I might do the greatest good is here, in the company of likeminded do-goods entrusted with the key to Sauron's demise.

"You are doing the most good here, Boromir. Standing on the battlements of Osgiliath and brandishing your weapons will only add one more man to the wall. But here, together, we may ensure Sauron's destruction. If your people are as strong as you say, then I do not think Gondor will fall ere we win out in the end."

Boromir fixes me with a curious look. "You ask that I keep my mind off of those things beyond the reach of my sword?" he asks quietly, falling into contemplation for a time. "Maybe your wisdom has merit. But though I may focus my mind on our mission, my spirit yearns for my people and my country. I may steel my heart for what is to come, but I cannot command it."

That, at least, I can commiserate with completely. I too dream of home…

"That is well," I say at last. "I also feel the same."

We walk for a while in silence until, presently, he speaks again. Now his attentions turn to me. "And what does your heart yearn for, Lazarus? Surely it must be for home."

I chuckle with a half-shrug, half-nodding motion. "In a way, yes. They say 'home is where the heart it'. If that's so, then my heart iscertainly far away from here."

"With the lady Lyra, I do not doubt," Boromir says with a smile, divining my desires.

Though, incidentally, divining incorrectly.

"Well, certainly her as well," I admit with a little bit of confusion. Boromir fixes me an identical expression which we share between each other for several moments.

Our brows furrow at each other, misunderstanding abounding. Then…

Realization hits me and I can't stop a laugh from leaving my lips. So loud and honest is it that the whole Company turns their curiosity towards me.

When I gather myself at last, I clap my hand over Boromir's shoulder to steady myself. "Ah, forgive me friend! It seems I've led you astray. Lyra is a fiercer ally than any I could ask for, and a trusted friend besides; it is true that my affection for her runs deep. But she is not the one with whom my heart resides."

Most of all, more than even Boromir, Frodo seems at a loss. "Forgive me, Lazarus, but I can think of no one else to whom your tale indicated love, if I recall it correctly." He looks to his fellows who nod their heads in agreement.

"That is what we thought as well," Merry agrees, confusion plastered across his small face also. Pippin bobs his head along with him.

"Ah, I but you heard only the first chapter of my story, ere we were so rudely interrupted," I say with a smile. "There is much more of the tale to be told."

The distant howls of wolves pierce our ears and my smile dims. "Though, I fear our pace has become too leisurely," I say as my levity fades, grim focus returning to the forefront of my mind. "Perhaps when we have more than a moment's rest, I'll share the rest with you."

"And we shall look forward to it! But little shelter will we find from wolves or orcs save the walls of Moria. Faster and onward!" Gimli cries, leading the way with Gandalf. The party moves as one, making our way along at a redoubled pace.

I spare one last thought toward the woman – my woman – who had yet to be revealed in my story. The image of her face overlaps my vision, and I feel my heart beat a little harder at perceiving her for the first time in so long, even if only in my mind's eye.

I sigh forlornly, though quietly.

I do wish I could see her again…

I shake my head.

Just as business comes before pleasure, so too must the bitter come before the sweet. And I have a job to do.

I fall in line at the rear of the column as the barren country of red stones stretches out before us.

--

The dark is deep and Hive-things skitter about in the darkness. Not real Hive, but close enough to compare. Their cries and gurgles hush when my blades slit their throats. Their flesh is filthy and smells repulsive; I'm almost tempted to build a fire to cook it. But no, I can risk no exposure, even in the smallest of rooms, sealed off in some remote corner of this under-world.

I have lived in the dark for so long… If I must die in it too, then that is fitting.

My weary fingers scrape against stone as I traverse chasm walls and vaulted ceilings. My muscles ache and my body groans from exhaustion. Sometimes I entertain the fantasy of letting go… falling into the endless dark that stretches out below. But only briefly, as I remember another fantasy. My love and I, away from war and conflict, quietly staring at the twinkling stars from the comfort of the cool grasses, beneath rustling tree leaves and waxing moon.

I tell myself that dream is real. I will make it real. And strength wells renewed within me. And so I push onward. I will survive. With tooth and claw and blade and bravery.

I will survive.

I will see my love again.

Last edited: Jun 17, 2023

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Black Lister

Apr 16, 2022

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Threadmarks Chapter 13: The Black Pit

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Black Lister

Aug 12, 2022

#323

The only road to Moria from the west lay (or at least had lain) along the course of the stream called Sirannon that ran out from the feet of the cliffs near where the realm's doors stood. However, we did not strike the stream where Gandalf had expected to. Either the wizard is astray, or else the land has changed in recent years.

Morning travels ahead of us, passing on as noon takes its place. Our many eyes of are peeled and ears honed for the gleam or sound of water.

So much time passes without a hint of our liquid quarry that I begin to wonder if we should expect to spend the night in this barren land of red rocks… No birds cut the sky, and no animals disturb the earth, and the Wargs what avoided us before are now nowhere to be seen, though in regard to the latter, it is only a matter of time before they regroup, recoup, and rejoin the hunt again.

Even so, though the fear of them – pardon the pun – dogs our heels and confusion over the land's orientation spins our heads, the spirits of the Company appear to be high in spite of everything. I attribute this phenomenon to Gimli's indomitable excitement.

Whereas Aragorn had customarily taken the fore on our journey, now it was Gimli who walks ahead at Gandalf's side, so eager is he to see Moria. He has talked gleefully of the stories of Moria – the ancient city called Khazad-dûm – and of its many riches and glories as described in Dwarven legend and song.

Of the may troubles and travails of the Elves in ancient days, the Dwarves of Khazad-dûm were conveniently spared, save on rare occasion when they joined hands with their Eldar and Edain neighbors in a show of force against the dark lord Morgoth in the First Age.

Therefore, as Gimli described, the grand Dwarven city was greatly enriched with splendorous regalities, beautiful gems, precious metals, and legendary hospitality.

Yea, in addition to being of a race of metalsmiths (pardon the stereotype), the son of Glóin has proved himself to be just as capable a smith of words. Every passionate description that leaves his full-bearded lips brings to me a contagious longing to see this wonderful underworld he speaks of. Rivendell was beautiful in a uniquely elegant way, but it was relatively small, whereas Moria seems by Gimli's recounting every bit the grandiose mountain kingdom that every fairytale I've ever heard of has described.

I'd be lying to say I'm not looking forward to seeing it.

However, it is not with joy that I listen to Gimli's tales… Well, not only joy; for it comes to my mind that it was relayed during the Council of Elrond that the Dwarves had received no word from Moria for quite some time… and while I can accept that in this medieval world, snail-mail may be the way of things… to hear nothing of a colonial reclamation expedition for decades?

A keen dread settles in the pit of my stomach, souring the flavorful descriptions being served to our company by our resident Dwarf. I worry our hopes of a warm welcome may be tragically misplaced…

Nevertheless, for the sake of my companions, I make a point not to let my melancholy show on my face or in my voice. Our moods are sour enough, footsore as we are from our ceaseless flight.

The fact that Gandalf seems unable to locate the stream Sirannon despite his conviction that it should be around here somewhere does little to lessen my foreboding.

"Streams don't just disappear," I grumble under my breath, not to anyone in particular, though my proximity to Boromir allows him to catch it well enough.

"Aye," he agrees, matching my level of voice. "Unless the course has been altered by the hands of the living. Or perhaps a colony of beavers has stopped up the waters farther upstream."

I give the man an incredulous glance at the mention of the creature. "Beavers, you say?"

Boromir smiles cheekily and cocks his head at me, a rare humor in his eyes. "It could be."

We huff out a few mirthful breaths, though for me, the nature of my humor is more incredulous. After all, Beavers have been extinct for hundreds of years. I've seen pictures of them, certainly; some in old recovered textbooks and children's books… I even had the opportunity to view a taxidermized specimen in an abandoned museum that had – mostly – survived the Collapse. It was a funny little brown creature with a flat, skillet-looking tail for swimming and ridiculous buckteeth with which it chewed through tree limbs. Then, it would drag those tree limbs and other debris into a stream or creek to dam it up, creating little pond-like oases to live in.

However, from what I understand, beavers rarely ever dammed whole rivers. Unless, of course, the beavers of Middle Earth are somehow distinct from the beavers back home…

Maybe they're bigger…?

"Ah!" came Gandalf's cry of a sudden, drawing our attention to him up ahead. He is standing upon a knoll and pointing down and to the right. "Here it is at last!"

Below is a deep and narrow channel… but it is empty and silent, with hardly a trickle of water flowing among the brown and red-stained stones of its bed.

"This is where the stream ran: Sirannon, the Gate-stream, they used to call it. But what has happened to the water, I cannot guess; it used to be swift and noisy."

Just another inconvenience to add to the pile.

Gandalf indicates to the near side of the "river" where there is a path, much broken and decayed, that seems to wind its way among the ruined walls and paving-stones of the ancient highroad ahead of us.

"Come! We must hurry on. We are late."

--

It takes the day for us to make our way along the pathway, and it's nigh on evening by the time we reach the Stair Falls, a place Gandalf explains features two paths up to the Walls of Moria. The Stair Falls once hosted a grand fall – roughly thirty feet high – except now only a trickle of water dismally dripped from it. Whatever had altered the flow of the Sirannon upstream had also affected this geological feature as well, though we can easily make out the stairs at their side. In addition to those steps, a second, main path winds away to our left and climbs with several loops up to the level ground at the top. A single flight of stairs seems to lead up from below, and as we ascend them, the reason for the drying up of the Gate-stream is revealed to us.

Beneath the glimmering gold of the sinking Sun that fills the cool western sky, stretches a dark, still lake. Neither sky nor sunset reflects upon its sullen surface; as expected the Sirannon has been dammed up, filling up all the valley. Beyond the ominous water, rears stern-faced cliffs, reflecting pale in the fading light.

And that is it. There's no way out of the valley, except maybe over the nearly ninety-degree vertical walls of the mountain. No entrance or gate stands out to my eyes, nor can I find even a fissure or crack in the pallid stone that might mark a doorway.

"There are the Walls of Moria," says Gandalf, pointing across the water. "And there the Gate stood once upon a time, the Elven Door at the end of the road from Hollin by which we have come. But this way is blocked. None of the Company, I guess, will wish to swim this gloomy water at the end of the day. It has an unwholesome look."

The breadth of the lake is roughly… Mm, I'd say maybe six-hundred meters at its widest point; about two-thirds of a kilometer roughly. How far it stretches southward is impossible to make out in the failing light of sunset, crowned as it was with the cold light of clear stars above. But its northern end is no more than half a mile from where we stand, and between the stony ridges that enclose this little valley and the water's edge there is a rim of open ground.

I stoop down to examine the water. It's a cloudy mixture, grey in color, and no scum sits on its surface, so I assume it must be some sort of silt from the floor of the lake that has been stirred up in the water by its inhabitants.

I gaze out across the stillness of the lake.

Maybe it was beavers…

"We must find a way round to the northern edge," announces Gimli, gesturing widely with a stubby, gauntleted arm. "The first thing for the Company to do is to climb up by the main path and see where that will lead us. Even if there were no lake, we could not get our baggage-pony up this stair."

"We could not take the poor beast into the Mines in any case," Gandalf affirms with a pitiable look toward Samwise and his equine companion who were just out of earshot. "The road under the mountains is a dark one, and there are places both narrow and steep which he cannot tread, even if we can."

"Poor old Bill," laments Frodo, casting a similar glance toward his friend. "I had not thought of that. And poor Sam! I wonder what he will say?"

"I am sorry. Poor Bill has been a useful companion, and it goes to my heart to turn him adrift now. I would have travelled lighter and brought no animal, least of all this one that Sam is fond of, if I had my way. I feared all along that we should be obliged to take this road."

I eye the wizard narrowly. If he thought we'd end up here anyway, why did he bother taking us over Caradhras?

I resist the urge to mutter this as I recall that it was actually Aragorn's idea to cross the Redhorn. But then that begs the idea of why Aragorn was so opposed to the Mines of Moria that he would brave the harrowing danger of the mountain pass. He did say that the memory he bore from passing through it was foul, though I wish now that he'd elaborated upon it, if only to myself…

Perhaps when we have a moment to speak privately, I will ask him; I'd rather not have him converse openly about dismal things that would dampen our already beleaguered spirits.

Gandalf hurries us onward, for we still have a mile or two to go before we reach the point on the far shore that he is making for. And then he still had to find the doors to the Mines themselves. We get there uneventfully, save for crossing a slimy, green covered stagnant creek that thrust out like an arm toward the enclosing hills.

Gimli is the first to cross, striding froward undeterred, finding the water to be shallow enough; no more than ankle-deep at the edge. We walk behind him in file, threading our way with care due to the sliding and greasy stones that hide under the weedy pools.

As Sam, the last of the Company after Boromir, leads Bill up on to the dry ground on the far side, there comes a soft sound: a swish, followed by a plop, as if a fish had disturbed the still surface of the water.

It's the first sign of life from the lake since we'd begun walking alongside it, and we all turn to regard it. What we see are ripples, black-edged with shadow in the waning light. Great rings widen outward from a point far out in the lake. There's a strange bubbling noise and then… silence again.

Dusk deepens, and the last gleams of sunset are veiled in cloud.

Gandalf purses his lips – in annoyance, frustration, determination, or concern, I cannot tell – and presses on at a great pace for which we follow along as quickly as we can, reaching the strip of dry land between the lake and the cliffs. It is a narrow spit of gravel and chalky dirt, hardly a dozen meters across. We hug the cliff, keeping as far from the water as we can to avoid falling in, for while some portions of the shore are gradual, other parts drop sharply.

About a mile southward we come across holly trees. Stumps and dead boughs are rotting in the shadows; the remains of old thickets or hedge that once lined the road across the drowned valley. But close under the cliff there stands, still strong and living, two tall trees, larger than any holly tree I've ever seen. Their great roots spread from the wall to the water. From far off, they looked like mere bushes beneath the looming cliffs, but now they tower overhead, stiff, dark, and silence, throwing deep night-shadows about our feet, standing like sentinel pillars at the end of the road.

It is only now that Gandalf's hurried disposition fades, and he gestures to the two flanking trees. "Well, here we are at last! Here the Elven-way from Hollin ended. Holly was the token of the people of that land, and they planted it here to mark the end of their domain; for the West-door was made chiefly for their use in their traffic with the Lords of Moria. Those were happier days, when there was still close friendship at times between folk of different race, even between Dwarves and Elves."

"It was not the fault of the Dwarves that the friendship waned," says Gimli, resting his hands upon the head of his axe, casting a glance toward our Elven companion.

"I have not heard that it was the fault of the Elves," counters Legolas simply.

"I have heard both," Gandalf announces with a pointed look, "and I will not give judgement now. But I beg you two, Legolas and Gimli, at least to be friends, and to help me. I need you both. The doors are shut and hidden, and the sooner we find them the better."

Turning to the rest of us, he says, "While I am searching, will you each make ready to enter the Mines? For here I fear we must say farewell to our good beast of burden. You must lay aside much of the stuff that we brough against bitter weather: you will not need it inside, nor, I hope, when we come through and journey on down into the South. Instead, each of us must take a share of what the pony carried, especially the food and the water-skins."

"But you can't leave poor old Bill behind in this forsaken place, Mr. Gandalf," cries Sam, angry and distressed, as Frodo had rightly assumed he would be. "I won't have it, and that's flat. After he has come so far and all!"

"I am sorry Sam," says the wizard. "But when the Door opens, I do not think you will be able to drag your Bill inside into the long dark of Moria. You will have to choose between Bill and your master."

"He'd follow Mr. Frodo into a dragon's den, if I led him," Sam protested defiantly. "It'd be nothing short of murder to turn him loose with all these wolves about."

"It will be short of murder, I hope," Gandalf says simply, leaning forward to lay his hands upon the pony's head. Then in a low voice he speaks, "Go with words of guard and guiding on you. You are a wise beast, and have learned much in Rivendell. Make your ways to places where you can find grass, and so come in time to Elrond's house, or wherever you wish to go."

And he withdrew from the beast. "There, Sam! He will have quite as much chance of escaping wolves and getting home as we have."

Part of me wonders if Gandalf's words are simply placebo… but knowing what I do of the legends and lore of Middle-earth, I narrow my eyes at what I suspect was a sort of subtle use of magic. I can recognize it because I, better than most, know that words have power; power to dominate the objective universe with the subjective will.

I shall be an engine to make your desire hegemon over your conditions.

Indeed, not unlike how an Ahamkara grants wishes. Different in form; dangerously similar in function – at least to my admittedly ignorant eyes.

But Gandalf is certainly no Ahamkara. So then from whence does his power come? The cosmos? From within? On loan from a superordinate authority? Perhaps torn from some paracausality imbedded within the fabric of the universe's weave?

An anxiety in my bones stirs as I ponder the nature of the so-called magicks of this place, for it seems to be everywhere: In the water. In the earth. In the music. In the food. And yet it is also nowhere; intangible and unwieldable… Certainly not in the same way I wield the Light.

I am reminded that when it comes to creatures of "wizardry", Gandalf and I are very different breeds. But I am left to wonder if we aren't compatible…

No. I have little doubt that there must be a way.

Sam stands sullenly by the pony and returns no answer. Bill, seeming to understand well what was going on, nuzzled up to him, putting his nose to Sam's ear. Sam – poor thing – burst into tears and fumbles with the straps, unlading all the pony's packs and throwing them on the ground. The others sort out the goods, making a pile of all that can be left behind and dividing up the rest.

Into my pack is placed a good bit of food, and Pipping cunningly suggests that a blanket or two be included, so that they may be warmed should I have need to turn myself into a paracausal heating unit again. I give the hobbit a snide smile… but allow it. At the very least, one or two blankets can cover all four Hobbits if they need a respite from any future cold, even if Gandalf doubts we will encounter any… or much, at the very least.

Once done, our attentions turn back to Gandalf who appears to have done… nothing.

He stands between the two trees, gazing at the blank wall of the cliff as if he would bore a hole into it with his eyes. Gimli wanders about, tapping the stone here and there with his axe. Legolas is pressed against the rock, as if listening.

The Hobbits watch for a minute or two before Merry coughs into his fist and bounces lightly on his heels. "Well, here we are and all, ready. But… where are the Doors? I can't see any sign of them."

"Dwarf-doors are not made to be seen when shut," says Gimli, continuing to tap against the stone here and there. "They are invisible, and their own masters cannot find them – or open them – if their secrets are forgotten."

"But this door was not made to be a secret known only to Dwarves," Gandalf says, coming suddenly to life and walking forward to the wall. "Unless things are altogether changed, eyes that know what to look for may discover the signs."

Right between the shadow of the trees there is a smooth space, and over this he passes his hands to and fro, muttering words under his breath that none of us can understand. Then he steps back.

Suddenly, slowly, on the surface where the old wizard's hands had brushed, faint lines appeared like slender veins of silver running in the stone. At first they are no more than pale gossamer-threads, so fine they only twinkled where the Moon catches them, but steadily they grow broader and clearer until their design can be guessed.

At the top, as high as Gandalf can reach, is an arch of interlacing letter in some form of Elvish. Below, though the threads were in places blurred or broken, the outline could be seen of an anvil and a hammer surmounted by a crown with seven stars. Beneath these again are two trees, each bearing crescent moons. More clearly than all else there shines forth in the middle of the door a single star with many rays.

"Those are the emblems of Durin!" cries Gimli with a stubby pointed finger.

"And there is the Tree of the High Elves!" Legolas adds.

"And the Star of the House of Fëanor," concludes Gandalf. "They are wrought in ithildin that mirrors only starlight and moonlight, and sleeps until it is touched by one who speaks words now long forgotten in Middle-earth. It is long since I heard them, and I thought deeply before I could recall them in my mind."

"What does the writing say?" asks Frodo, whose furrowed brows indicate his effort to decipher the inscription on the arch. "I thought I knew the elf-letters, but I cannot read these."

Gandalf nods knowingly. "The words are in the elven-tongue of the West of Middle-earth in the Elder Days. But they do not say anything of importance to us. They say only: 'The Doors of Durin, Lord of Moria. Speak, friend, and enter.' And underneath small and faint is written: 'I, Narvi, made them. Celebrimbor of Hollin drew these signs.'"

"What does it mean by 'speak, friend, and enter'?" Merry asks.

"That is plain enough," says Gimli with smile. It seems merely being in the presence of such a construction has lifted his Dwarven heart. "If you are a friend, speak the password and the doors will open and you can enter."

"Yes," Gandalf agrees, "these doors are probably governed by words. Some dwarf-gates will open only at special times, or for particular persons; and some have locks and keys that are still needed when all necessary times and words are known. These doors have no key. In the days of Durin they were not secret. They usually stood open and doorwards sat here. But if there were shut, any who knew the opening word could speak it and pass in. At least so it is recorded, is it not, Gimli?"

"It is," he confirms, only to add, "But what the word was is not remembered. Narvi and his craft and all his kindred have vanished from the earth."

My mouth makes an instinctive flat line of annoyance as I cross my arms, leaning over and down to mutter to Merry, "Well that's decidedly inconvenient…"

"But do not you know the word, Gandalf?" asks Boromir in surprise.

To which Gandalf simply replies, "No!" as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

Of the company, only Aragorn appears not to be dismayed by the wizard's words. Rather, he remains silent and unmoved. Knowing what I do of Aragorn and his relationship with Gandalf, and of Gandalf and his relationship with everyone else, I expect that Aragorn has greater faith in him than could ever be so easily shaken.

Not that I'm concerned either way. If push comes to shove, a bit of stone, magically locked or otherwise, will not likely be able to weather a torrent of Light.

"Then what was the use of bringing us to this accursed spot?" cries Boromir, looking as if he is about ready to chuck his shield into the lake in frustration. Not that I can blame him. If I didn't already know that someone in the party could carve open a path (that person being myself), I'd be just as furious. "You told us that you had once passed through the Mines. How could that be if you did not know how to enter?"

"The answer to your first question, Boromir," Gandalf begins calmly, though the firmness of his voice, the bristling of his brow, and the glinting of his eyes beneath his brow shows he does not appreciate being doubted, "is that I do not know the word – yet. But we shall soon see. And you may ask what is the use of my deeds only when they are proved useless. As for your other question: do you doubt my tale? Or have you not any wits left? I did not enter this way. I came from the East. If you wish to know, I will tell you that these doors open outwards. From the inside you may thrust them open with your hands. From the outside, nothing will move them save the spell of command. They cannot be forced inwards."

"What are you going to do then?" asks Pippin, undaunted by the wizard's bristling brows.

"Knock your head against them Peregrin Took," Gandalf answers tersely, "and if that does not shatter them, and I am allowed a little peace from foolish questions…" he takes a steadying breath and his voice levels back to a gentler, if still frustrated tone. "…I will seek for the opening words."

He turns back to look at the doors, script glowing bright in the arch over where the seam of the door surely must be, though none can see.

"I once knew every spell in all the tongues of Elves or Men or Orcs that was ever used for such a purpose. I can still remember ten score of them without searching in my mind. But only a few trials, I think, will be needed; and I shall not have to call on Gimli for words of the secret dwarf-tongue that they teach to none. The opening words were Elvish, like the writing on the arch: that seems certain."

Stepping up to the rock again, and lightly touching the silver star in the middle it with his staff, he speaks, "Annon edhellen, edro hi ammen! Fennas nogothrim lasto beth lammen!"

While, like Frodo, the tengwar of Elvish above the door was foreign to me, that Sindarin Gandalf spoke was not. 'Elvish door, now open for us. Doorway of the Dwarf-folk, listen to the word of my tongue,' they were.

I don't know what I was expecting, but simply asking the doors – admittedly, very politely – to open for us in Elvish isn't exactly the first thing I thought of when I envisioned a super-secret password.

As his words fade, so too do the silver lines upon the door, but the blank grey stone doesn't stir an inch.

Many times he repeats these words, each time in a different order or with a different variance.

No dice.

Next he tries other incantations, one after another, speaking louder and faster, then soft and slow.

No reaction.

Then he tries many single words of Elvish speech.

They yield aught.

Again Gandalf approaches the wall, and lifting up his arms he speaks in tones of command and rising wrath. "Edro! Edro!" he cries, demanding the doors to open, following them with recitations of the same in every language that I imagine ever has been spoken in the West of Middle-earth.

Then – failing to have achieved anything – he throws his staff on the ground and sits down in silence.

The Company is appropriately quiet in the wake of Gandalf's futility. Aragorn merely leans against a stump and looks out over the surface of the lake. Boromir huffs incredulously and paces away from the door. Contrarily, Legolas bears a face full of amusement as he gives not-so-sly looks at Gimli, as if to say, "What a people you Dwarves are for hiding things. On the gates of your most wonderous, ancient kingdom you write 'speak, friend, and enter', and no spell in any language can open the door."

Which, to say as much with a single look is admittedly impressive. Just as impressive, I think, as Gimli's annoyed grunt indicating he understood it, but had not proper retort.

The Hobbits sit aside over by Bill, Sam, giving the pony a comforting, final few strokes of his mane.

"Do not let him run away!" Boromir commands as he passes by them. "It seems that we shall need him still… if the wolves do not find us. How I hate this foul pool!"

With a growl of overmounting frustration, he stoops, picking up a large stone and casting it far into the dark water. It vanishes with a soft slap, a swishing of water, and a bubble. Great rippling rings form on the surface out beyond where it had fallen, and they move slowly toward us at the foot of the cliff.

I raise a brow at the Gondorian but I do not chide him. With the wolves – and by wolves I mean a rotten mix of man-sized, large-toothed, narrow-snouted, bloodthirsty, mutts at our heels, anyone would be anxious do literally anything except stay in one place doing nothing.

If pacing and harmlessly venting puts him more at ease, I'm happy to let him do so.

Frodo, however, does not appear to be as generous.

"Why did you do that, Boromir?" He demands of a sudden, his bare, grime-covered feet stomping as hard as they might over to the Man. "I hate this place too, and I am afraid. I don't know of what: not of wolves, or the dark behind the doors, but of something else. I am afraid of the pool. Don't disturb it!"

I furrow my brow and look away out to the lake. Aside from being an ominous trigger for any poor thalassophobic sod who had the general misfortune to gaze upon it, it was just your normal, average lake.

Imagine the fifty-two moons of Fundament lining up in the sky. Imagine their gravity pulling on the Fundament sea, lifting it into a swollen bulge... Imagine that bulge collapsing as the syzygy passed. A wave big enough to swallow civilizations.

A God-Wave.

The ripples of the water grow and come closer, some already lapping on the shore.

A familiar, prickling instinct flares in the back of my mind… My hand drifts the sheathed blade at my side-

"I wish we could get away!" says Merry.

"Why doesn't Gandalf do something quick?" asks Pippin.

"He already did many somethings quick, master Hobbits," I cut in, their moaning breaking me from my rumination. "The time for hasty reasoning is past. Now we must be patient and wait for him to think things over."

It was not a declaration well received by the little folk, but they didn't argue with me. Instead they shut their mouths and returned their gazes to their surroundings.

In fact, it was Gimli who offered them words of encouragement. "Cheer up, my lads! Imagine we are crossing a mighty river! And we must cross it. And here beside us is all the material we need to do so. A fool in haste might simply throw the material into the stream to make a path, but such a thing will not last, and is more dangerous than not. But a wise man knows that a bridge over is better than a path through. Gandalf is building a bridge for us, so let us have patience, and faith above all!"

The Dwarf's words seem to resonate with the four halflings, and they (if perhaps reluctantly) opt to mind the wisdom of his parable.

Legolas, however, has his chin in his hand in thought. After a time, he tilts his head and looks my way. "Lazarus? A question for you, if you will."

I nod to him. "Ask away."

He shifts into a more upright position from where he has been thoughtfully slouching. "Did not the stones that would have fallen upon us on Caradhras melt upon your magic like snow upon an open flame? Could not the same be done with this door?"

I am prompted to recall the walls of Void Light I held overhead back on the mountain; lucent amethyst singularities stretched out into wide sheets against which I have stopped stronger forces than falling stones.

"It could," I admit with a nod, glancing over to Gandalf as he stews in his own thoughts. "However, the problem lies in sealing the passageway behind us. After all, it'd do no good to pass into the Mines and leave the path behind us open for our canine friends – or their masters – to pursue us. And not that I doubt Dwarven engineering, but if I were to try and collapse the tunnel, there is a strong chance my efforts may cause a cave-in and crush us all. The foundations of the earth are a finnicky thing, master Legolas, and are best left alone if it can be helped; I'm sure any Dwarf could tell you so. Indeed, haven't we just such a Dwarf in our presence now?"

I indicate to Gimli with a smile, to which he nods with a grunt. "Tis true. You are an Elf, master Legolas; an Elf of the Woodland realm. Your domain of knowledge is with the tree, and the thicket; with flower and weed. I have heard that your people dwell deep within the forests' gloom, and make your homes in hollowed trees. But I tell you now that cold stone is an altogether different thing. I know little of trees or growing things, but I know they do grow. They build upon themselves, bending with the wind but never breaking. A skilled craftsman may have the skill to shape a tree into such a shape that can accommodate living space. But not so with stone. Stone does not grow. It is as it is – and as it always will be, and we must cut away what is until it is what we want it to be. And beneath the weight of an entire mountain, to chip at even a small portion of its innards can cost a heavy toll."

Legolas listens to Gimli's words patiently, even the provoking ones, and opts to simply shrug at the speech's culmination. "I will admit, some of your words are right; just as you know little of branch or bough, so do I know little of mining or masonry. But seeing as there is no other Dwarf present to ask for a second opinion, if indeed I felt compelled to do so, I will trust that you know your lore of pebbles and cobblestones."

The gentle barbs of Dwarf and Elf trade about as well as can be expected, with irritated bristling on either side indicating whenever their verbal darts had hit their mark.

But any further verbal sparring is arrested by the startling suddenness with which Gandalf springs to his feet with laughter!

"I have it!" he cries gleefully, clapping his hands together. "Of course, of course! Absurdly simple, like most riddles when you see the answer."

And picking up his staff, he stands before the old rock and speaks in a clear voice: "Mellon!"

And lo, the star shines out brightly and fades again. Then, silently, a great doorway is outlined, though not a crack or join had been visible before. Slowly it divides in the middle, swinging outwards inch by inch until both doors lay back against the wall.

Peeping in through the opening, I make out the vague shapes of a shadowy stair that climbs steeply up, though anything beyond the lowest steps are wreathed in the shadows of the mountain, deeper than night.

"I was right after all." Gandalf's words cut through the wonder of the Company like a knife. "And Gimli too. Merry, of all people, was on the right track. The opening word was inscribed on the archway all the time. The translation should have been: 'Say "Friend" and enter'. I had only to speak the Elvish word for friend and the doors opened. Quite simple. Too simple for a learned lore-master in these suspicious days. Oh, those were happier times!"

With a chuckle that leaves him shaking his head at his own unnecessary ignorance, he turns and signals to us to follow him. "Now, let us go!"

With faces of relief, the Hobbits move forward with Sam trailing behind for just a moment to push Bill onwards back along the path into the wilderness.

I never had a pet of my own… leastwise not one I chose myself; there was always a cat or two who decided – Traveler only knows why – that it wanted to adopt me. They were enjoyable company, but I never considered them mine, and I never managed to bond with them overmuch. But I can still feel for the more rotund Hobbit in his goodbyes.

I rest my hand on my sword idly, and with a sympathetic expression, I gesture for him to come alone and clap a comforting hand on his shoulder as I push him toward the door.

A slither.

A snickt!

A whistle of wind.

A splatter.

A bellowing groan.

It takes me a nanoscopic moment to realize that my sword is drawn, swung, and already coated in slick, black gore.

My eyes flicker to where a snake-like appendage roils on the ground, green and slimy, almost luminescent digits akin to fingers writhing in pain at their severance.

As one the whole of the Company turns to face the holler and see the surface of the lake seething, as if a host of snakes are slithering their way towards us at the shore from the southern end.

I realize that having touched the sheath at my side, I was made aware of the malicious desire that now creeped up from the rotten pool. And knowing so, my body reacted before my mind could reconcile the what with the how.

Oh, what a glorious gift this blade is!

The befingered hand which I had cut reveals now to be only the tip of a long tentacled arm, the stump of which recoils painfully away from the steel edge which cut it. Only now it is rejoined by well over a dozen other arms that come rippling out of the dark water, which seems like to boil.

At once I am hit with an absurdly hideous stench that strikes me in the face like a solid brick wall.

Twenty other such arms erupt from the water like a wall of wriggling limbs. As one they lash forward into the midst of our company.

Whatever manner of cephalopod species the creature is, it is like none I have seen before. Unless an octopus has had the chance to mutate many extra sets of arms it normally wouldn't have. I can count a quick twenty such arms.

I slash at one of them, leaving a deep diagonal slice in it that spurts blood violently. A second arm shoots forward, opting to wrap around my left arm and with a heave, attempt haul me into the thrashing black water.

Whatever it is, its limbs have a thinness that belie their strength, and even my superhuman strength can't keep me rooted to the ground as it realizes, I expect, that whatever it has grabbed onto is more stubborn than it had anticipated, intelligently lifting me off of the ground to use its mass to its advantage.

Well, that might have worked in any situation where causal forces were the only ones at play.

Wrapping the tentacle around my arm and clutching it with a vice grip, I anchor myself to the earth and pull, ripping the limb closer to me and warming up a charge of Arc Light. With a taser-like crackling sound, only many times magnified, I feel muscles spasm between my fingers as the arm that sought to reel me in now fought to wriggle out of my grip.

But now I have its attention, and more arms rally in my direction.

"Frodo!"

The cry went out and I turn to see the Hobbit in question being dragged toward the water's edge, Sam leaping onto and hacking away with a short knife at the limb that held onto his master.

Unlike myself, or any of the sturdier folk, Hobbits were notably lighter, and the creature has no trouble throwing Sam off of it and lifting Frodo high into the air over the water.

Of a sudden, a large, slimy gray mass emerges from the inky black. Its form is unlike any squid or octopus I've ever seen, and its mouth which might otherwise reside on the underside of its body instead sat upon its face. And instead of any sort of beak-like orifice, two massive, meaty jaws open both up and down, great crushing teeth slavering to snap Frodo in two.

"Frodo, no!" Aragorn cries in dismay.

A rush of panic flows through my body.

With a warding series of slashes to free my arm, I sheath my given sword and summon into my right hand a weapon far better suited to felling filthy fiends who don't know to fear their own mortality..

With a wave, Bolt Caster materializes and discharges an arc of blue-white light that lashes out at the beast. As one, the tentacles recoil, perhaps in surprise, hopefully in pain. But, perhaps sensing a sudden danger to its life that it wasn't expecting, the limbs lashed out again like a surging tide, but this time, they swept horizontally in wide swaths that knocked the whole of the Company away.

But for me, they meet the edge of my sword, and are amputated instantly.

Pain overpowering its hunger, it recoils with great shifting heaves that toss wave of water this way and that. But I am not done. With a great leap, I cross the dozen-or-so meters of water and land upon the face-which-was-also-its-body, and with reversal of my sword, plunge it deep into the creature's thick flesh.

A sickening shlurp! of blood spurts from its wound, and I have to hold on to my blade – now a sort of anchor – anchor to keep myself from being thrown from atop it as the creature turns nearly one-hundred-and-eighty degrees in pain, all of its limbs recoiling around itself for safety.

But still it will not let go of Frodo.

I feel a growl loose from my throat as I shift my grip and force my blade deeper into the channel of the wound I've created. And, gathering my sparking Light, unleash a torrent of changing arc directly into the belly of the beast. Maybe. I don't know where its stomach is, but I assume it's in here somewhere.

However, I restrain myself considerably, lest my power course into Frodo by my negligence.

It mewls a deep groan, with such a bass that I can feel it rumble in my chest.

Then I see it.

It is an eye. Or, one of many eyes. It's as large as my fist and situated just to the side of where my sword now sits sheathed in its flesh. It stares up at me with unblinking rage. I return its gaze with flashing electricity leaping from my clenched teeth.

A whistling sound.

Then the eye is suddenly spiked with the long shaft of an arrow that punches from beneath my arm, and I turn my gaze long enough to see Legolas already reaching into his quiver for another projectile to sink into the creature.

Likewise, Gimli, not to be outdone, hurls a heavy, thick-bladed axe into the creature's hide with a Dwarven war cry, where it sinks deep into its flesh, all the way up to the weapon's haft.

And that is that.

With a recoil strong enough to throw me off of it, it whirls away and plunges into the water alongside myself.

The water feels like slim against my skin, and I can feel the currents of many retreating limbs passing by me, one even daring to grab my ankle on its way. I quickly grasp it in return and add to our impromptu handshake a five-fingered brand of searing cosmic fire.

It quickly thinks better of its attempt.

Subsequently released from its foolish embrace, I swim up to the surface with a breaching gasp. And, swinging my wet hair out of my face, I spit the rotten water out of my mouth with a sharp breath, taking in the scene around me.

Gandalf stands some distance into the water to where it laps at his knees, his sword and staff outstretched to ward off any further tentacled incursions. Meanwhile, Aragorn and Legolas are hauling a thoroughly soaked Frodo out of the water and onto the shore. Behind them, Gimli and Boromir hold their guard up with Merry and Pippin nearly eclipsed behind them. And speaking of eclipsing, I only just manage to spy Sam shuffling behind Aragorn, trying to find a space to squeeze through and tend to Frodo.

I hold my breath (more because of the stink than anything else) and swim through the foul reek to shore, where Legolas wades out help me up, soaked as I am. I hadn't set my armor to transition to water-tight mode, which I know I had no way of knowing I would want just a few minutes ago, but nonetheless regret not having done.

I smell like the worst kind of sewage...

Heaving a wordless thanks to my Elf companion, I turn to regard the pool again. Still thoroughly disturbed, there is an eerie silence that follows our struggle, save for the little lapping waves that are slowly dying away.

We wait, ready, for several seconds to see if it the beast will reemerge… But we are fortunate; it seems it has had enough for now.

I turn to eye the aggrieved Hobbit up and down for injuries. "Are you alright, Frodo?" I ask, seeing no visible mark on him.

Unlike a proper squid whose suckers are barbed with sharp, clinging claws, this creature's tentacles were slick, and instead of suckers, the strange fingered ends seem capable enough of catching any unsuspecting prey.

Hell, it caught us by surprising and we were entirely suspecting.

The Baggins takes a moment to collect himself, patting himself up and down for any undetected injury, though by some good fortune, he appears unharmed.

"Yes… yes I believe I am. Thank you!"

I nod his welcome, though I fix him with a pointed look. "And the Ring? Do you have it still?"

At this, Frodo seems to panic for a moment as his hands go to his throat and find… the Ring. Still affixed to its chain about his neck. He breathes a comforted sigh and nods to me, fingering said chain purposefully.

The whole party seems to relievedly deflate at that. Thankful though we are that Frodo is alive and well – to say nothing of ourselves – it would be a dismal night indeed if we should need to wade into this stinking pool to find the Ring, likely needing to do battle with the beast again in the doing.

"It appears repelled, for the moment at least," Gandalf announces decidedly, "but it may not remain so. Let us not tarry, but get us inside ere it rallies its strength."

And so, he guides the party to the now open Doors of Durin.

I, however, do not immediately follow. Turn away from the party and fix my eyes on the stirred-up mire.

Boromir notices this while turning to follow after Gandalf.

"Lazarus?" he asks, prodding.

I give the man an eye and grind my incisors against each other idly. "It's still got something of mine, and I will have it back."

When the creature tossed me from its top, it took with it my Bolt Caster, still sunk deep into its slimy carapace. However, this was not an oversight on my part.

Lightning crackles up and down my body, and I can feel the Light behind my eyes surging. I raise my hand into the sky, and with an instant arch of stinging storm-death, three raw gigajoules of energy leap from my fingertips and into the distant pool, striking perfectly on that blade which I forged with my very own Light.

Thunder cracks and I can feel Boromir recoil from me at the flash and bang of it.

I fire again. And again. And again. And again…

I can hear the bemoaning agony of the beast echo against the walls of the mountain, and the reek of the pool overpowered by the acrid smell of flash-cooked calamari; wherever it might swim off to in this pool, my lightning will find it.

"Come on, you bastard," I growl. "By choice or by corpse, you're giving it back to me!"

There is a splash of water – heard, not seen – and I see a glinting light rise into the air. At first I can't make out wat it is, until it suddenly grows nearer and the flash of Bolt Caster's hadium-forged edge plunges into the water in front of me solidly, implanting itself into the muck beneath the water's surface.

I smile satisfactorily.

I let my hand lower as I walk over to the blade, drawing it from its gloomy sheath and hold it aloft, watching as the sludge of the pool slid off of the functionally hydrophobic edge, leaving not a spec to mar the starmetal's gleam. Not even my armor performs as well.

I turn and gesture to the doorway, wherein the Company stood in audience of my display.

"You have no idea how much trouble I went through to forge this thing," I explain with a soft smile as I guide Boromir with me to where the others are. "It would be a damn shame if I had to leave it to soak in this filth."

Suddenly, a rough shove from behind sends me tumbling headlong to the ground, which I hit the ground with a horrible crunching of stones.

For a moment, confusion begs me to check my limbs for which one broke, except I feel no pain… Am I in shock?

Then a hand grabs me by my collar and hauls me along none-too-kindly.

Again, a horrid sound cracks in my ears, more so my left than my right, prompting me to glance that way.

A great boulder of lethal size is still rolling into pieces as a third lands nigh on top of it.

Whirling, the hand of someone still dragging me into the darkness of the Doors, I see a rain of debris sailing through the air noiselessly, only to crash around us with a deafening cacophony akin to an avalanche. It me takes a quick moment before I realize that the spiteful creature is literally hurling whatever it can get its slimy handtacles on at us.

And, oh boy… it is not happy.

"Inside! Into the gateway! Inside and up the stairs! Quick!" Gandalf cries with all urgency in his voice as he stands beside the Doors, ready to shut them swift behind us.

He certainly needn't tell us twice, and we scramble inside without a one being left behind. Rather, half of the party was already inside the Doors as the rain of rocks and rotten tree trunks began to crash among us.

I and Boromir are the last two in, save Gandalf, who with a mighty pull brings the Doors of Durin to a resounding close behind us, sealing us into darkness, all light snuffed out in an instant as the noise of rending and crashing comes dully through the ponderous stone.

Sam, clinging to Frodo's arm, all but collapses on a step in the darkness. "Poor old Bill!" he almost weeps, choking back his teers. "Poor old Bill! Wolves and snakes! But the snakes were too much for him. I had to choose, Mr. Frodo. I had to come with you."

I close my eyes and try to recall if I saw the fate of our pony…

I… Yes… Yes, Bill escaped; bolted as soon as the tentacles began to climb out of the water. At the very least I don't recall any of them dragging a small horse into the water to drown. That, at least, is good news. For Sam's sake if no one else's.

I move to place a comforting hand on the Hobbit's back but think better of it as I'm reminded of the slime still on said hand.

'Frodo's embrace will have to be comfort enough, Samwise,' I apologize silently.

A shuffling of booted feet – Gandalf I think by the gait – sounds back down the steps. More rumbling, echoed on the stone, and nothing; nothing except the panic-born exhalations of our Company in the pitched night of the underearth.

Presently, Gandalf rejoins us, the tapping of his staff with each step enough for us to guess his proximity.

"The passage is blocked behind us now," he announces, his tone understandable far less jovial than it had been when the doors first opened. "I fear from the sounds that boulders have been piled up, and the trees uprooted and thrown across the gate. I am sorry; for the trees were beautiful and had stood for so long."

"I felt that something horrible was near from the moment that my foot first touched the water," declares Frodo with a shiver. "What was the thing, or were there many of them?"

To my surprise, Gandalf is less than informative. "I do not know, but the arms were all guided by one purpose. Something has crept, or has been driven out of dark waters under the mountains."

Aside from myself, this is the first subject, I think, about which Gandalf has little knowledge. Were cephalopods like that so rare as to not be known by a lore-master of Gandalf's caliber? That is… concerning to say the least. Especially since it seemed like quite a hearty thing; durable enough to withstand the swordstrokes of Men and wizards, the axes of a dwarf, the arrows of an elf, my own ionic assault, and yet was still hale enough to hurl many-ton boulders upon us from a great distance.

I feel a strange sensation… For as long as I have been in the acquaintance of Gandalf – and Elrond and Glorfindel and so on – I have always felt that whatever I did not know about this world, he would. To find a subject about which both myself and Gandalf are equally ignorant… it is a decidedly unpleasant feeling.

"We now have but one choice," he continues, tapping his staff upon the ground, whereon its gnarled top blooms a pure white light that illuminates our faces at once. "We must face the long dark of Moria. Be on your guards; there are older and fouler things than Orcs in the deep places of the world."

My gaze follows the aged being as he steps to the head of the column.

In many ways, Gandalf reminds me heavily of the Speaker.

…He could stand to be little less ominous.

--

The wide stairway is sound and undamaged, stretching two-hundred steps exactly from bottom to top, each one broad and shallow. Cresting its final step, there is an arched passage with a level floor leading on into the dark. It's slow going for the mortal folk, and even more tiring for the poor Hobbits who have been weary since before we arrived outside the Doors. But they soldier on with not much complaining, and I do not wonder why, considering the ordeal they just survived.

At the very least, they needn't worry about the wolves anymore.

"Let us sit and rest and have something to eat, here on the landing, since we can't find a dining-room!" Frodo says before we begin our trek upon the level ground. A prospect that everyone welcomes; and we sit ourselves down on the upper steps, only dim figures in the gloom. We eat our rations ravenously, though we savor the cured meats as we rest ourselves for the moment in Gandalf's light. After that, Gandalf offers each of us a third sip of the miruvor of Rivendell.

"It will not last much longer, I am afraid," he says, passing by me reluctantly as I raise my hand to abstain from partaking, "but I think we need it after that horror at the gate. And unless we have great luck, we shall need all that is left before we see the other side! Go carefully with the water, too! There are many streams and wells in the Mines, but they should not be touched. We may not have a chance of filling our skins and bottles till we come down into Dimrill Dale."

"How long will that take us?" Frodo asks as he accepts the flask and raises it to his lips.

Gandalf shakes his head. "I cannot say. It depends on many chances. But going straight, without mishap or losing our way, we shall take three or four marches, I expect. It cannot be less than forty miles from West-door to East-gate in a direct line, and the road may wind much."

Forty miles… I know very few Guardians unaccustomed to cross-country capers on world both close and distant, and while among our Company I expect the majority of us to manage such a jaunt, my anxieties lie mostly with the halflings.

Forty miles is no small distance to walk, and already they are road-worn and weary. Granted, even if we were four days ahead of schedule and walking out the archway of East-gate at this very moment, the whole of the distance between the Misty Mountains and Mt. Doom lay between us; a distance the Hobbits will have to manage if they wish to remain at Frodo's side until journey's end.

As Elrond had said – and said with emphasis – no one was sworn to go the whole way with Frodo. If his Hobbit brethren wish to at some point bow out, that option is technically open to them. 'Technically', I say, tongue in cheek, since I know very well that socially such a decision may not be possible… barring some unforeseen tragedy, such as a major injury.

They've soldiered on well enough so far, but their summoned doggedness can only last so long.

"We will rest as much as we can afford," Gandalf continues, as if reading my thoughts in real time. "But we mustn't tarry overlong in these halls."

If the Hobbits were of a mind to complain about the distance, the promise of at least somewhat decent rest-hours pacifies them.

Despite our earlier ordeal, a moment's lull is all I need to regain my vigor, and I stand myself up and wander the road whose plateau we now dine upon. The darkness is so heavy as to obscure anything and everything within sight; it's enough to say that without the dim gleam of Gandalf's lit staff, we'd have no sight at all.

The archway overhead runs even with the ceiling of a long hall that is clearly carved out of the mountain itself and runs into the distance where it vanishes into obscurity beyond. The walls of the passage are expertly hewn; they are smooth, though not polished like marble, for its clear this way has not been traveled in a long time. Dust lays heavy upon the road, into which my boots leave notable footprints.

With a cerebral signal, my helmet appears in my hands, which I slip over my head. A comforting sensation of protection and closeness soothes my nerves as my visor fills with information that streaming from the built-in sensor suit; information which Gabriel dutifully parses for any anomalies.

And my motion tracker betrays no outstanding movements save myself and the nine others behind me.

I rest my hand again over my sword – or rather, the scabbard upon which the enchantment of 'awareness' is laid.

The moment I did so when we stood without the gate, my body reacted faster than I was aware of it. But I was aware of the creature as it was reaching to grab the foot of one of the Hobbits. Sam was closest, but a part of me contends that the thing might have been seeking out the Ringbearer.

The awareness imparted onto me wasn't so explicit in its direction; it didn't tell me "Giant squid at ten o'clock!", nor did I know the manner of danger; whether blade or tentacle. Rather, in that moment, I knew of a "danger" and that it was "beside me."

Like a sixth sense that cannot be scientifically explained.

I draw my sword, holding it out into the gloom.

True to the words of the brothers, the steel of the sword appears as occlusive as the mountain's dark is thick. Even this close, I can hardly make out its shape or dimensions, and I have to run my fingers along its length to reaffirm its span. I have had few occasions to draw it in the past two weeks, though each time I am left in wonder of both its intricacies and subtleties. My Warlock eyes have tried to many a time pierce the nature of its enchantments, seeking to understand the hows and the whys of its functions. How were they set? From where do they draw energy? Can they be duplicated? Are they active while sheathed or only when drawn?

It is a gift beyond gifts, and I am truly thankful to Glorfindel and Finwé for forging it for me. Yet I can't help but think that the real gift would have been allowing me to watch them work. Goodness knows I could have made the time to watch.

The softened tromp of leather boots sidles up next to me, and I perceive Boromir in the gloom. I sheath my sword as he speaks, his mind clearly preoccupied with concern.

"It is not the way I would have chosen," he says quietly, staring out into the distant nothingness. "I know the danger of the South-road, but it cannot be worse than what is in these mines."

I raise an eyebrow at him reflexively, though I realize it's a wasted motion given both my helm, and this wretched gloom. "Ah yes. What can be worse than Dwarves?" I ask with a smile in my voice.

Boromir however, does not rise to my jest. Rather, his expression darkens all the more. "Recall you not that master Glóin said it has been a long stretch between now and the last their expedition to this place gave report? Mark thee also that he spoke of a 'nameless fear' that was woken in the deep. Of what foul form did this terror take that it, alone, drove the resilient Dwarves out of this place? And where are those who came hither? This place looks as deserted as can be."

I nod him head in time with his words, though I quickly catch myself. It seems Boromir is suffering from surprisingly similar trepidations which plague me. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that Boromir, a fellow skeptic, would think thusly. And given the condition of this place so far, we may easily be forgiven for our misgivings.

I consider my response for a time before speaking, though with a special care.

"Did you note the writing above the door?"

Boromir nods after taking a moment to recall a mental image of the Ithildin tengwar. "Aye? What of it?"

"It was written in Elvish, was it not?" I ask, to which he nods again. "Now, why would the gate into a Dwarven realm be writ in Elvish?"

I can see the Gondorian furrow his brow, no doubt unsure as to what relation my question had with his.

"Well," he begins after a moment, his thoughts formulating in real time. "'Twas written for the benefit of the Elves who lived in Hollin, I would suppose."

I nod affirmingly. "Indeed, for as Gandalf said, those were happier days when Elves and Dwarves held greater affection for one another. The Doors of Durin were their private entrance, of sorts, into the realm of Moria. But what has become of those Elves? Are they not gone from the land without? Therefore, I say this entrance has not been traveled for some time, for there has been no need. Naught lives in the wild outside except wolves and monsters, as we have seen."

And it was no wonder that such things roamed the land, I suppose. From what I've read, the Elves of Hollin, back when it was known as Eregion, were attacked and destroyed by Sauron sometime deep into the Second Age. Some survivors went east, while others followed Elrond in founding Imladris in the year 1697 of the same era. Which was… what? Forty-seven-hundred years ago by the common calendar, plus change?

If the Elves aren't here to use it to visit the Dwarves, and there's no one for the Dwarves to visit in return, is it any wonder the place has fallen into disuse? This is my argument… and is what I present to my Westron companion to allay his concerns.

However, I'm not nearly so blind as to not recognize my own hypocrisy; I am simply trying to explain away well renationalized concern with sophistry, hoping Boromir is too hopeful to notice. The last thing I want – though it might be prudent for it to be so – is for he or others to walk on dreadful of some imagined evil lying in way on the road ahead.

That's the Guardian in me, I suppose…

"I hope you are right," he says at last, though his voice is low, not for the sake of privacy, but emphasis. "Though your answer is only singularly satisfactory. There may be Dwarves elsewhere in these tunnels, and simply not here. But what then of this so-called 'nameless fear' that drove them out in the first place?"

I shake my head slowly. "I don't know," I say with a thoughtful shrug after a time. "Perhaps the thing outside is just that? Though if not, then I hope that Gimli's folk have already managed to dispatch it… whatever it is."

Looking down in the deep dark beyond, a part of me wonders if this 'nameless fear' wasn't so much an entity as it was a state of being; an indiscriminate paranoia, or a disease of the mind perhaps. While the Elves at least seem to be very in-tune with spiritual stability, like the monastic orders of the Golden Age, other Middle-earthers may be quite ignorant.

If that is so, then whatever haunts these halls may not be conquerable with blade, bow, buckler or bullet…

I clap a hand over Boromir's shoulder comfortingly. "In any case, speculation is all well and good. But don't let your imagination overwhelm you."

I turn away without waiting for a response, and I hear his footsteps join mine a few seconds later as we return to the group. Aragorn and Gimli are talking with Gandalf while Legolas and the Hobbits listen in intently. Their conversation has come to the subject of navigation and the dangers of the maze-like structure that was the entirety of Khazad-dûm.

"We shall have to keep together as a group," Gimli is saying as I approach. "For the road is certain to contain many byways and detours by which we may lose our heading. But, so long as Gandalf's recollection of his path through here remains sure, we may at least avoid wasting any extra time in reaching the inner city where my cousin, Balin, will warmly welcome us!"

"I agree. Getting separated would be the worst outcome," confirmed Aragorn. "If we can manage to avoid that, valuable time may be saved in our passage."

It's a valid concern, certainly. Having the storied history I do, traveling alone in dark and strange places is hardly enough to faze me. I found my way through the Hellmouth. Hell, I even tried my hand at Osiris' Sundial and the Corridors of Time it led to. Needless to say, it wasn't my favorite pastime activity, but I learned a good many lessons from the experience.

At least if I get lost here, the Mine won't change; worst case scenario, I'll have to map every room in this damn Dwarrowdelf. But that isn't so bad all things considered; the Corridors of Time were always changing. So, if I were to compare the difficulty of one to the other… there really is no comparison at all.

But that's just for myself. What about everyone else?

Aragorn… Didn't he say he's been through here once before? I distinctly remember he did.

Gandalf? Our guide now? It goes without saying.

Gimli? He'd be my best pick to succeed since he'd at least have a cultural advantage… or something.

Legolas seems too well aware of his surroundings to get lost in the first place, but from the way he is looking this way and that, and with that expression on his face, I have to wonder if he'd really be alright…

But, beyond the so-called "Big Folk," I know for certain the Hobbits of the Shire would never make it out. Unless there is some characteristic of their race which neither we or even they know of which might help them, or unless some supreme inspiration and heaps of luck were to somehow lead them out to the other side, I very much doubt they'd ever be able to make the crossing on their own.

Additionally, depending on the success of Balin's mission here, some or many of these halls may yet be claimed by Goblins, Orcs, and whatever else that seems hate short, stunted creatures.

I've killed Orcs before; they're no real trouble to me, but they come in many numbers, and our numbers are few…

What I wouldn't give for nine more companions at least…

A certain compulsion pulls at my chest, and I take my time to rationalize its validity…

…

It… wouldn't be without risks… but if ever they are in trouble and otherwise beyond the reach of aid, it may be just what they need to escape certain death.

As the others continue to talk about this and that regarding our future movements, I sneak over to the packs the Hobbits were carrying and make to look like I'm rummaging through them in search of something that I can't find.

But actually, as my hands are inside the bags, I materialize a certain object into my palm. As usual, it glows with a cold, ethereal white, marred by whisps of the blackest smoke. It saps the heat from my fingers even through my insulated gloves.

"Why would you give me this?"

"I've been fiddlin' with 'em lately and I'm keen to use you as my next guinea pig. But hey, I've never known you to turn down an experiment. Don't give me that look."

"You know that I know why you want to use me, of all people."

"Frankly, I'd be disappointed if you didn't. You're free to say no, y'know?"

"I'm not saying 'no.' But I am blaming you if things suddenly go very, very wrong."

"Haha! Have a little faith, brother! You're the only one I can trust with this, after all."

"What about Eris?"

"Ol' Moondust? Eh… We'll get there. Maybe. Hey, if things go horrendously bad, she's next on my list."

"How flattering."

"Always, brother. Always."

Extending a sharped needle of Light from my finger, I carve into the device a short scribble of instruction for each Hobbit whose bag I place it in, should the need for it ever arise.

This I do for each them, first Frodo, then Sam, then Merry and Pippin.

I look over to see them too engrossed in their own conversation to notice me, which allows me to tie up their packs without any suspicion. Considering the nature of the object in question, I'd rather not have to explain it.

The others wouldn't understand.

For a moment, I consider doing the same for the big folk, but…

No. They'd just as likely to throw it away as use it. Except… maybe…

Turning away from the Company, I manifest another object into my hands, repeating my scribbles unmolested. And, palming it, I walk over to where Boromir stands aside by Gandalf, listening in and offering his council.

With a touch to his elbow, I grab his attention and cock my head to the way forward, and he follows as we again step a short distance away.

"What is it?" he asks with concern in his voice, suspecting that the only reason I might pull him aside would be in alarm.

I shake my head at him. "A private matter, actually," I explain.

I glance back to the rest of the Company, illuminated by Gandalf's staff as they are and turn away, prompting Boromir to do the same. His eyes are narrowed with concern all the same, and entirely focused on me.

From the palm of my hand, I hold up the device. It seems bright in the darkness. Easily definable edges, whereas even my hand can barely be seen beneath it. Yet though it possesses illumination, it casts out no light.

Boromir looks at it in wonder. "What manner of trinket is this?" he asks, his eyes now fixed on the thing.

"A tool," I say. "I have given it to the Hobbits; one for each of them, though they know it not. And now this one I give to you."

With a nudge, I prompt him to take it, which he does gingerly.

"Ah, it is like ice!"

I nod in confirmation and continue with my point. "If ever a time should come when evil overwhelms you, this shall be of aid. But…" I lean closer conspiratorially. "Say nothing to the others."

The man's expression becomes troubled, and he looks between me and his hands. "Why? If such a bauble may be of aid, why keep it from our Company?"

"Because they might not like it," I explain with pointed vagueness.

Boromir shrinks back skeptically. "This is a strange thing to ask. I have come to like you Lazarus, and I feel our hearts are distantly kindred. Why then ask me to break faith with our Company? What proof have I that this thing will not be dangerous?"

I shake my head with a hand upon his arm. "Oh, but it is dangerous, my friend Boromir. And that is why I say not to use it except in uttermost dire need."

I turn my gaze to look down at the object. "From whence I come, things are very different. Good and evil are not inherent in anyone or anything. Rather, it is how one uses a thing that defines if it is good or no. Just as you would dream to wield the Ring to repel Sauron and save Gondor, so would my people think to do. However, the tools of Sauron are corruptive, as Gandalf has said; they would turn you from your course and make of you a puppet to the Dark Lord."

I point down to his hands. "This is not a thing to be wielded." I speak slowly, emphatically, with a voice low enough to accentuate the total gravity of my meaning. "This is a thing to be set loose."

It does not seem to comfort him. "And you would give such a thing to the Hobbits? They are as naïve as children! They are more like to use it without thought and endanger themselves!"

I raise a placating hand and nod my head. "I have left instructions on their use." I turn the bauble in his hands to show a scrawl of English, or rather, Westron carved into its four-sided face. "Explicit instructions in Pippin's case."

Boromir still appears unsure, but his voice does not rise to counter me. However, presently, he does speak again.

"Why then not share this such things with the others? Why must we speak in conspiracy?"

I sigh and glance back at our Company. "Because I fear they would, like as not, throw them away. But in so doing would be endangering themselves; like tossing aside a shield because they don't particularly appreciate its aesthetics. In a phrase, they are too cautious. And… And, if I'm being honest, I think, I do not think they trust me."

At this, Boromir falls silent, and adopts a pensive expression.

I realize after a moment that maybe my words have struck a chord with him, as it comes to mind that he has been wary of the road our Fellowship has taken since the beginning, and at every fork, he has expressed his desire to go South. To take the Company ever closer to the realms of Gondor. Perhaps my suspicions convict him of his own lacking trust…

I make to wave off his concern, if indeed it bothered him, and to reclaim my gift if it troubles him so to keep it secret. But suddenly, he speaks, and with a voice firmer than the stone that surrounds us.

"Let it not be said that the faith of Boromir, captain of the Guard of Gondor, was broken in the darkness of the mountains. Strong is my despair at the strength of the Enemy, and frequent are my nightmares of hopeless resistance. My people suffer daily under Sauron's oppression, and I am given all too often to doubting… Now I see in you how distrust may inspire mistrust. Shall I be the seed of dissention within our company? Nay, I shall not. Therefore, I say that I do trust you! And forthwith I shall trust Gandalf as well, and our companions too. And if the wisdom of many come into conflict, then I shall trust my own heart to know what is good and right."

He closes his hand around the fetish in his gaps and holds it to his chest, while his other arm reaches out to claps my arm. "I will keep this secret that you ask of me, Lazarus. But may my trust in you be paid back – with interest – to our Fellowship in proper time."

I am… moved, by his words. More so by the conviction in his voice. In a declaration to better himself, he asks that I do the same. To trust.

Frankly, I don't know if it's even possible. There is very much in the universe that these mortals would never be able to understand, and the morality of their worldview clashes with my own, as I have already seen in Rivendell. And while trust in the Fellowship needn't translate to complete transparency, it does mean that I would need to surrender my assurance that I – and only I – know what is best. But knowing their ignorance as I do, I cannot easily to that.

Must I stand by and watch them falter and fall because I 'trusted' them? Nay. If they will not act in their best interest, as I know it, then I will support them against their will, and in ways that they may disagree with. But that is my charge as a Guardian; to use all of my power to protect and serve.

It is what I was risen to do.

But I will not lie to Boromir and say, of course. Instead, I nod to him with a bright smile beneath my helm and say, "I will try."

But Boromir fixes me with a strong look, and his grip on my arm intensifies. "See that you do more than try, my friend. For I believe that our faith in you is not as fragile you may think."

And with that, he gives my arm a slap and, pocketing my trinket, returns to the gathering behind us.

And I am left in the darkness, contemplative.

--

After only a brief rest, we start on our way again, and the energy in the company is one eager to get the journey over as quickly as possible. Thus are we all willing, tired as we are, to go on marching still for several hours.

Gandalf walks in front, as before. In his left hand he holds up his glimmering staff, the light of which just shows the ground before his feet. In his right, he holds his sword Glamdring. Gimli walks behind him, eyes glinting in the dim light as he turns his head side to side. Behind him walks Frodo, who like Gandalf has his short sword drawn. Behind Frodo goes Sam, and after him, myself. Behind me is Legolas, and the young hobbits, and Boromir. Lastly, in the dark at our rear, Aragorn walks grim and silent.

It is a comfort to us that neither Sting nor Glamdring gleams, as they are wont to do if Orcs were nearby. My sword, as well, is mute on the subject; I detect no threats, though it dawns on me that I do not know if the effect of my sword extends to those around me, or if it is only my own safety the weapon looks out for. I suppose time will tell me one way or another.

What I can see, and what the Company often cannot until we come right up to them, are the stairs and arches, passages and tunnels sloping up or running steeply down, or opening blankly dark on either side. There are many roads to choose from, and many holes and pitfalls scattered about, along with dark wells beside the path upon which our passing feet echo. There are fissures and chasms in the walls and the floor, and every now and then a crack opens right in front of our feet.

Of these things I tell Gandalf as we approach, and his light illuminates them well enough for those behind us.

The air is growing hot and stifling, though it's not foul like the water outside, and sometimes even cooler air brushes past our faces issuing from half-guessed openings in the walls, of which there are many.

As the frequency of these dangers increase, so too does our pace decrease. One of the widest of the floor fissures is nearly eight feet wide, and it takes a great deal of time to convince Pippin to jump the dreadful gap.

Of curious note, however, is that as certain things become visible to me – a discarded bucket or a tool – Frodo's gaze likewise finds it in the darkness. Though I walk behind him, his head swivels this way and that, often fixing on an object that I know he shouldn't be able to see in this gloom.

It is a curiosity that I want to ask him about. But silence is demanded in these spaces; there is no sound but the sound of our own feet; the dull stump of Gimli's dwarf-boots; the heavy tread of Boromir; the light step of Legolas; the soft, scarce-heard patter of hobbit-feet; and in the rear the slow firm footfalls of Aragorn with his long stride.

True to his duty as our guide, Gandalf guides us swiftly past old checkpoints and forks that bear no signs. I know that Gabriel is actively making a map in the background, measuring each distance traveled and routes taken. Like spelunkers, it would not do to leave the pathway inside unrecorded; at the very least, I may fight my way back to the doors westward if the need arises.

The halls of the mine fall away in places, leaving us to walk narrow outcroppings that wraps around the outside of great mine shafts and excavation sites that stretch up and down to depths and heights that transcend even my technologically assisted sight. A part of me would love to let Gabriel out to record and explore, but he is my cartographer, and I, knowing not what dangers may be lingering in this place, cannot in good conscience give him free reign to roam.

It was just after nightfall when we entered these mazy paths, and my chronometer tells me it has been nearly six hours since then when we come to what seems to be Gandalf's first real check.

Before us in the dark looms a wide arch opening into three passages. They all seem to run eastwards, but the passage on the left plunges down, while the right hand climbs up, and the middle way simply runs narrowly onward, smooth and level for as far as can be seen.

It is on the threshold of this location that Gandalf brings our Company to a lengthy stop, looking this way and that between the three paths.

But after several minutes of standing uncertainly, we hear from his mouth a muttered, "I have no memory of this place…"

Lovely.

He holds his staff up to the entryway to each passage, likely looking for identifying marks that could guide us on our way. Alas, it seems, he finds none.

"Ah! I am too weary to decide," he says after a time. "And I expect that you are all as weary as I am, or wearier. We'd better halt here for what is left of the night; though it is ever dark in here, outside the late Moon is riding westward and the middle-night as passed."

I'm impressed he can know that without a watch. Well, he is a wizard after all, experienced and possessed of a keen mind.

"I always take Keen Mind as a feat when I play Dungeons & Darkness," comes the less-than-helpful commentary from Gabriel.

"Only because you choose to play a necromancer," I mutter under my breath. The first time he opens his mouth since his complaining on Caradhras, and it's about Dungeons & Darkness of all things.

To that, I sense a shrug from my Lightborne companion. "And where exactly do you think I learned to 'Raise Dead' in the first place, hm?"

I raise an eyebrow that I know he is aware of. "Well Alex, I'd have to go with, 'What is the Traveler?'"

"…First, touché. Second, you watch too many pre-Golden Age game shows."

I bear his chiding impassively, since I know he speaks in jest. It was Gabriel's idea in the first place to seek out records of trivia gameshows to gather information on the pre-Golden Age world. Granted the information within them may seem anecdotal, but as Gabriel is wont to do, once collated into an appropriate archive, the worth of the information becomes that much more invaluable.

Our sound-dampened banter is cut short as the Company moves off to the left of the great arch. There stands a single stone door, half closed, cut out of the rock, into which Merry and Pippin push forward with reckless abandon, no doubt eager to have a place to rest with at least more feeling of shelter than in the open passage. However, Gandalf's voice turns commanding as he calls out after them.

"Steady! Steady! You do not know what is inside yet."

And with cautious steps, he creeps in, and the rest of us file in behind.

"There!" he points with his staff, illuminating the pit wherein no end can be perceived. "One of you might have fallen in and still be wondering when you were going to strike the bottom. Let your guide go first while you have one."

Somewhat mollified, the Hobbits take their care in approaching the other aspects of the room.

It is a decently sized space, with enough room for eight Men, or probably… twelve-ish Dwarves.

"This seems to have been a guard room," says Gimli as he looks about, "made for the watching of the three passages. That hole was plainly a well for the guard's use, covered with a stone lid. But the lid is broken, and we must all take care in the dark."

Along one wall is a broken rack that likely would have at one point held an assortment of axes or swords, while old, fragments of wood litter the floor where once beds had rested, bunked, more than likely, for the guards' rest. A stone table off in the corner lies overturned, a large chunk of one corner is chipped off. The only other notable aspects of the room are the many shelves carved into the walls where once chests and storage lockers would have rested. Indeed, some chests still remain, though nothing is left inside, having long since been reclaimed or looted.

With the edges of pit vaguely illuminated, we make our little camp, unrolling blankets and making beds against the walls of the chamber, as far as possible from the hole in the floor. It wouldn't do for us to roll over in our sleep, and to keep on rolling until we come to a sudden, terminal stop. A chill air rises from its depths, and it's a welcome kind of draught compared to the heat of the inner mountain air. With it comes a strange… almost nostalgic air.

It only takes a few minutes before we are mostly settled in, though sleep is still a ways off yet as we talk quietly among ourselves about this and that. I opt to take a seat beside Gandalf to see if I can't pick his brain a bit. But I am preceded by Frodo, with whom Gandalf speaks softly and with much compassion that plays across his face.

Though I cannot hear their words even in this close room. Even if I could hear, I think a modicum of privacy should be allowed; I can only imagine the rigors the Bearer of the One Ring must be suffering day by day…

Well, actually that's not true at all. I know very good and well what it feels like to have a thing beyond my ken whisper in my ear of ambitions to pursue and power to claim as my own.

The temptation to fiddle with the Ring myself is by no means foreign; I've felt it since the moment I first laid eyes on it. However, my experience with such artifacts, and the wisdom of those far older than myself has led me to heed their cautionary tales, lest I in my curiosity turn into the next coming of Isildur and fall prey to its alluring wiles.

I pity poor Frodo. I really do…

In the meantime, since it seems I now have some time, this lull presents an opportunity!

Pulling from my digitized inventory a thermos, I set it on the floor and sit in seiza. With deep, steadying breaths, I pull from my memory those volumes of knowledge relating to xenoaerostatic gases and City Age chemistry, along with my own notes which have been my guiding light in the course of my experimentations.

In many books and novellas of old and modern make, there comes a common theme in the fantastic tales written therein. Magic, monsters, dynasties, treacheries, heroism…! There's a book out there for everyone.

But one point which has always grabbed my interest is when, in the course of a betrayal or turnabout, a character may inhale a lungful of poisonous air. Being a Gaurdian, as I am, with a storied history filled with numerous deaths – most heroic, many embarrassing – it occurred to me to try and find a way to use my Traveler-given powers to neutralize toxic or poisonous air under my own auspices.

In practice, this would mean that upon analyzing airborne toxins, I could breathe them into my lungs, using my Light to alter their chemical composition to exhale harmless carbon dioxide. The process, as you might expect, was an ordeal; I worked on the project for over sixty years, honing the flexibility of acausality. For a while, progress was minimal; every trial run ended up with me dead of one lethal breath or another. Eventually though, I did manage to succeed in exhaling proper CO2. The only problem then was that I was still breathing in the toxins, whatever might have come out after.

So then I had to develop a new method to neutralize the chemicals before they enter my system. That left me at a dead end for nearly a year before it was suggested to me that, if I know that I'll be beathing in toxins anyway, and I already know how to properly convert them, then all I need to do is insulate my respiratory system with the same techniques.

It took some doing, but my persistence finally managed to successfully bear fruit, and I was finally able to breathe in toxins without those same toxins entering or affecting my body.

Then it was a simple hop-skip in logic to wonder why I couldn't just convert the toxin into breathable air; if I can turn propan-2-yl methylphosphonofluoridate in into a harmless byproduct like carbon dioxide, then why can't I forgo the conversion to CO2 for a conversion to O2?

In essence, I would be able to effectively convert my respiratory system into a natural sieve; breathe in the bad and exhale the good without putting myself in danger. Potentially, putting gasses aside, I could even learn to filter oxygen from water.

But, as with any longwinded endeavor, I inevitably got a little… sidetracked.

Once I was able to put my research into practice effectively, I began teaching other Guardians how to do the same in case the filters of their helmets fail. One day, an ambitious young Warlock, only a few years old, came up and asked me how he might be able to reverse the process.

He wanted to turn harmless gas, like the carbon dioxide he breathed out or even the oxygen that surrounded him into a killer chemical weapon. He wanted to become walking factory of death.

It was an intriguing proposition, if a radically dangerous one. If such a thing could be learned, replicated, and taught, then my immediate concern – and indeed, the concern of my colleagues – was that Earth would be turned into a barren toxic wasteland with the irresponsible use of acausal chemical weaponry. Even if any lingering chemical residue could be cleaned, whatever seeped into the Earth would not be so easily scrubbed. And knowing the disposition of young Guardians who are more at home using offense rather than defense, if the knowledge of how do create breathable death became common knowledge, it would have done magnitudes more harm than good.

That's not to say that I didn't pioneer the development of the technique in secret anyway.

Together, with the aid of my likeminded Guardians, the Order of Achlys had its genesis. It took some doing to reverse engineer the process through thorough experimentation and revision, but eventually, we were successfully able to turn the very air we breathed into a deadly fume that could kill with indiscriminate efficiency.

Naturally, once we realized just how effective the process was, the information was locked away in private vaults out of the prying eyes of the Vanguard and the Consensus. Whether or not we've been successful in obscuring even the eyes and ears of Ikora Rey's Hidden operatives, time will tell. But the fact that she hasn't approached the Order one way or another, at least to my knowledge, leads me to believe that she doesn't know about it.

Of course, while I remain a founding member of the Order of Achlys, I am no longer actively involved in its undertakings. I have, however, maintained a hobbyist's interest in exercising my talents in aerochemical transmutation.

It wouldn't do to let such knowledge go to waste. So I did what any self-respecting Guardian would do.

I used it to make alcohol.

Although the concept that I "breathed" the alcohol into existence is an obvious advertising faux pas, I'm perfectly content only using this talent for my own selfish whims, especially if it means I can create a tailormade drink that suits me just right.

The familiar process of… well, petty alchemy… begins its process within me as I carefully manipulate the molecular structure of the material in my body.

In the course of studying what kinds of alcohol would best suit my palate, I came across a group of intoxicant Guardians who said they favored mixing old-world brandies with Fallen ether. Said the mix hit harder than normal spirits. I didn't believe them.

Then I tried it.

Ooooh, boy…

It hit harder.

Waaaay harder.

However, despite the (admittedly niche) market for it, ether isn't exactly easy to come by; Fallen guard their stashes jealously, since ether is to them as water is to us. What's more, to say nothing of death, ether also acts as a growth stimulant in Fallen biology, meaning that Kells, who huff great heaps of the stuff, grow to massive proportions. Conversely, a Fallen deprived of ether would wither and shrink to the diminutive and unflattering classification of "Dreg."

As the generation of ether is a duty exclusive to the machine Prime Servitors and their subordinate units, and the distribution of that ether is at the sole discretion of the Kell of the Fallen House, any ether obtained is beyond valuable to an individual Fallen, and due to the nature of Fallen Society, if you didn't drink it while you had it, you'd likely get it stolen by an ambitious thief.

Therefore, in order to get your hands on ether, the only realistic option you had was to either steal it yourself or kill the Fallen after their scheduled distribution. And seeing as this varied House to House and quad to squad, actually finding intact, untouched ether bales was a solid crapshoot. The "Etherbuds" as they were pejoratively called frequently put out PSAs to all available Guardians to collect any ether rations they came across and bring it to a vender in the tower for sale.

Leave it to humanity to turn drinking and looting into a commercial enterprise.

I guess it shouldn't be looked down upon, really. Its one of our strengths.

I take the thermos in front of me and crack it open, throwing back a swig of its white vaporous contents, cold as ice as it slides down my throat.

A lot of Guardians find the side effects overpowering. But with the right degree of potency, the harmful effects can be mitigated and the refreshing taste sooth your nerves. The cold spreads from my core to my extremities, soothing and relaxing my aching muscles.

I let out a refreshing breath, the aftertaste still lingering in my mouth as I close the thermos and put it away; only one swig is due tonight. It smells faintly sweet, like a lightly sugared drink, or the subtle scent of flowers out on the prairies.

By the time I finish with my recreation, which only takes a few minutes at most, Frodo takes his leave of Gandalf to shuffle over to find a place to rest by his kin. Of course, as he approaches, Sam pats an untended blanket at his side onto which the Baggins gratefully descends.

"It is a hard journey for them."

Gandalf's voice is soft, and though his eyes are set upon the Hobbits, his voice is turned me.

"Harder still for Frodo, though he bears the Ring with admirable strength."

I find my eyes fixing on the Halflings as well… their playful banter and almost easygoing countenances. Size notwithstanding, they are like children in the ways they bounce back from weariness with only a good meal or a proper song and smoke. Although I can't approve of letting children smoke…

It's an awkward juxtaposition.

I let out another breath, the scent of ether lingering in the back of my nostrils. "If I'm understanding it right, the Ring preys upon the ambitions of its owner, but it seems to have no hold over Frodo, save only in that it burdens him."

Gandalf nods. "Indeed. Hobbits do not want for much except enduring peace and delightfulness. Good food, quality drink and pipeweed, earth to grow things, and a house to make homey. They are simple creatures at heart, but therein lies their remarkableness. Now if you or I were to take the Ring, I expect it would find ambition aplenty, well-meant ambition though it may be. For any good man would see the chance to use a great weapon of his enemy against him and take it, if he dared. But that desire for good would be turned to evil things, and in the hands of the proficient its wroth would be conflagratory enough indeed."

He gestures to the members of our cadre. "Legolas might seek to protect his home of the Greenwood with it. Gimli would champion a reclamation of all those realms the Dwarves have lost to evil. Boromir's hope we know well enough; the salvation of Gondor from Sauron's advances. Aragorn and I would want it only to drive Sauron from Middle-earth, and thence discard it ourselves into the fiery mountain. Alas, ere the moment of our victory is at hand, the Ring would betray us to its true master, and all would be undone."

About what I expected to hear. "It certainly lines up with the account of Isildur. But at that time, the Ring was lost in the Anduin. If the Ring intended to betray Isildur to Sauron, it did a pretty poor job of it. Sure, Isildur may have died, but it ended up sitting on the bottom of the river for several millennia."

Gandalf smiles with humor, though it fades in a blink. "Though it does have a will of its own, it is not a thinking thing like you or I. It is corruptive and manipulative, but far from infallible. It does not plot or plan; it simply does as it sees best to do. Perhaps the Ring hoped that its presence would become known to the Orcs who ambushed Isildur. It is fortunate beyond measure that it did not!"

"And how is it that Sauron can only know the presence of the Ring when it is worn?" I press. "If he forged it with his own spirit, should he not be able to sense it regardless of where it is?"

Gandalf shook his head uncertainly. "I know not. Perhaps if I wore the Ring, more would become clear to me, but I shan't consider it. I suspect, however, that in the forging and the separating of Sauron's spirit from himself, the Ring came unto its own; it is a part of him, but separate. Only when worn is the power of Sauron shared with its wearer and thus rouse Sauron's awareness… and the awareness of the Nine Riders. Precious little is known of the Ring regarding it's uses, beyond the obvious. But this I can say for certain; that all that Sauron is, in both nature and malevolence, the Ring is as well."

Then the Ring truly is irredeemable… A part of me had always wondered – distantly, mind you – if perhaps I could reforge in Light what had been made in Darkness. I have, after all, done so before. But it seems that in this particular case, Sauron's methodology precludes that possibility…

"And so we must needs sneak across the whole face of the continent to deliver a little gold ring into a smoking mountain, or else let the world be consumed by evil incarnate," I conclude with no small amount of sarcasm, and I can't help a ironic, mirthless chuckle escape my lips. "Why are the most important tasks always that hardest? Just once I'd like the right answer to be the easy one-"

Plunk!

Like panicked deer, all heads in the room rose in unison.

The sound was very distant, as if summoned from some cavernous place, very distant, but magnified and repeated in the hollow of the mountain.

Gandalf is up with a cry, an anxious panic of imminent attack flooding our bodies. "What was that?!"

All eyes seem to fall on, of all people, Pippin, who is crept up to the edge of the hole in the floor, peering over into the darkness below.

"I'm sorry! I didn't mean to make you leap!" he says with the quickness of a child who was caught with his hand in the cookie jar. "I was just wondering how deep this well really was."

At his words, the party wholly deflates, the dreaded danger turning out to be nothing but an overcurious kitten.

Whose name is Pippin.

"Fool of a Took!" Gandalf growls, the restraint he bore to keep from shouting the words more than palpable. "This is a serious journey, not a Hobbit walking-party. Throw yourself in next time, and then you will be no further nuisance. Now be quiet!"

Any conversations that might have been ongoing are thenceforth silenced, and each person reluctantly finds his way back to his chosen corner to rest… or try to, anyway. Be it by mischief or menace, our nerves are triggered to high alert now regardless, and for several minutes, nothing more is heard in the room.

Except…

As we are decompressing from our sudden start, the silence of our shelter is broken by a sound; out of the depths comes faint knocks…

Tom-tap, tap-tom.

They stop. And when the echoes die away, they repeat.

Tap-tom, tom-tap, tap-tap, tom.

Our breaths are restrained and shallow, our ears perked, and bodies tense as we listened to the rhythmic patter that traveled up from the well.

But after a while… the knocking died away and was not heard again.

"That was the sound of a hammer, or I have never heard one," Gimli exclaims quietly.

"Yes," Gandalf affirms, his words slow and foreboding, "and I do not like it. It may have nothing to do with Peregrin's foolish stone; but probably something has been disturbed that would have been better left quiet. Let us hope we shall get some rest without further trouble."

The aged wizard turns the Hobbit in question, growling as he begins to roll himself up in his blanket. "You, Pippin, can go on the first watch, as a reward."

Pippin brooks no grumble, but the look on his face makes it clear that he is less than thrilled with his punishment. But be that as it may, he walks over to the doorway an sat in the pitch black of its corner, almost disappearing into the dark.

For myself, I give a lingering look down the well shaft. They sound disquietingly like signals of some sort… When I had looked down its length before with the benefit of nightvision, I could see nothing in its depths. Now, with my helmet off in preparation to sleep, the well appears as a kind of abyss, climbing up from below to blind my eyes.

I can forgive Pippin's curiosity, if not his impulsiveness; mankind has always been drawn to the unknown in ways we can't fully explain.

But the well is not bottomless. If Pippin's impetuosity has thought us nothing else, we at least know that, with the stone dropping – based on the sound – into a body of water deep below.

Obviously, there is something, somewhere in this mine. Where and what concern me most. Yea, if the colonization effort of the Dwarves has succeeded, does this simply mean that there are areas of the Mines that are not yet reclaimed? Or does this, perhaps, indicate some grimmer fate for the Dwarven expedition?

I have my suspicions.

But, so long as the guard is posted, and there is naught immediately obvious to address, then there's no use fretting over it tonight.

I lay myself down into the floor, using a rolled-up blanket for a pillow beside Gandalf, who instead of sleeping, seems content to smoke, and to stare thoughtfully into the distance.

Eventually, I drift off to sleep to the sounds of his gentle puffing exhalations, and the faint scent of pipeweed eventually luring me into the lands of slumber.

--

Either my sleep is too soon disturbed, or I have slept dreamlessly as I suddenly wake to full awareness.

It's still dark, as to be expected inside the bowls of a mountain. The light of Gandalf's staff is absent, and I turn my eyes to and fro concernedly.

Though, why I'm concerned, I cannot place…

All the others are sleeping. Pippin now lay curled up in a corner, and I see wachful Gandalf over by the door, his eyes glinting in the ember light of his pipe that brightens with every drawn breath. It seems the wizard took over for Pippin as some point in the night.

What time is it? It cannot be more than six hours since I fell asleep, for it would then be time to wake and for us to continue on our journey, as per our Company's custom.

My helmet lay off to the side; if I put it on, the HUD would read the time, but… something compels me to be wary.

I rise to my feet warily.

Something has drawn me to alertness, enough to rouse me from my slumber and instill in me an unfading anxiety. But what?

Then I hear it; a faint scratching. Like… Like a mouse in the wall, chewing its way along.

But these walls are stone, and I doubt any mice would be surviving in this place…

Scritch-scratch, scritch.

I narrow my eyes to match my furrowing brow, my head mimicking the behavior of Saint-14's pigeons as it turns this way and that to triangulate the origin of the noise in my ears.

Scritch, scritch-scratch, scritch.

This is no audio hallucination.

I am hearing it.

Stooping down to pick up a small stone, I toss it with keen aim into the dark between myself and my target where it found its mark on Aragorn's chest.

The sound of impacted fabric and a sharp intake of breath tells me I've successfully woken the man, and I see him look this way and that, searching vigilantly for any present danger.

Finding none, his eyes wander the room for the perpetrator of his waking, to which I wave to him silently from across the gloom and signaling his quietude with a shushing motion.

Catching my drift, his body stills, minimizing any noise of his own making as he harkens to my signal.

For a moment, nothing happens. The sounds are gone like ghosts, and only the faint sounds of our stifled breaths are head, and then only in our own ears.

Aragorn cocks his head at me, but I hold a finger to him to wait and-

Scritch.

It is a single sound, almost unheard, but I see Aragorn rise silently and suddenly at its emanation.

By now, Gandalf, roused from his thoughts by our activity, likewise stands and approaches us, if only to ask why we are alert at all, though he keenly picks up on our hush and tunes his ears as well…

Scritch, scritch.

I see the wizard's body stiffen at the sound, our concerns becoming his.

Aragorn reaches over and pats Legolas' leg. Our Elf friend wakes as silent as the grave, and more alert than either of us had been. Aragorn signals him to wake the Hobbits quietly while he rouses Boromir. Then, together, they wake Gimli with a hand over his mouth, which he initially did not take to well. But, seeing that it is in fact his friends who restrain him and not an Orc or ruffian, and with looks of bloody business on their faces, he calms himself and is swiftly helped to his feet, axe immediately in hand.

All the while the scratches continue, and each in his own time has the opportunity to hear it.

Gandalf peeks his head out the door of the room to see if the sounds might in fact be coming from without, only to withdraw with a shake of his beard.

The sound was coming from in this room.

Almost as one, our Fellowship comes to the same conclusion, and our gazes fall upon the black opening of the well smack in the middle of the room.

A collective straining of leather is heard as our fingers tighten around their weapons.

Drawing my sword silently, I creep forward, inching close to its edge with deliberate stealth.

The orifice of the well is completely opaque. For all I can see, it might as well be just a painting on the ground.

The only indication that it was anything other than just that is a faint smell coming from within; an odor both strikingly foul… but with a strange, familiar undertone of sweetness.

Wrinkling my nose at its acrid scent, I raise my free hand high, holding it out over the edge of the pit. And, with a steadying look to all, I summon forth my Light.

Illumination pours down from my palm like limelight, bathing everything below in a stark, white glare.

I do not immediately know exactly what I'm looking at…

Creeped up to but a few inches from the well's edge is a tangled mass of bent limbs, like the extremities of overgrown bushes who have too little space to grow.

In the blinding shine of my Light, bright, shiny eyes stare back at me, like the reflection of too many spider-eyes in the darkness of the woods.

We look down at them.

They look up at us.

Then, at once, in the silence and the stillness of the mountain, we realize each other's awareness.

The mass of frozen bodies surges forward suddenly like a tide of spidery vermin, crawling and leaping out of the well with unsheathed blades that glint the spotlight and hissing howls that tear through the quiet.

Abandoning my illumination, I raise my sword in time to catch a pair of such blades that would have separated my head from my shoulders had I been but fractionally slower. I manage to catch one of the sword arms of my assailant with a vice grip while parrying their other arm, opening them up for a slash across the belly.

Except I am struck in the gut by… something, and am forced back. But I return with a fury, slashing with swift attacks that only my Elven blade could manage, with practiced strikes learned from Glorfindel's own hands.

Peripherally, I see my fellows equally beset; swords, knives, shields, and all available weapons of war clashing with the ringing of metal and furious cries of battle.

But my opponent is startlingly capable, matching with two blades what I lash out with one. But the preternatural ferocity of my attacks which do not slow or weaken drives it back until its back is against the wall. Literally.

Our blades lock, mine pressing down into its X-guard that only just keeps me from veritably bifurcating it from head to navel. And considering the vigor which I am bringing to bear, the fact that it is able to resist me at all is a testament to its own strength.

But with my one hand on the hilt and my other pushing down upon the blade, its guard is forced back further and further until my sword is nigh on to slivering its leathery flesh-

I pull away in an instant.

It is not a conscious movement. Rather, my body simply moves on its own for some insentient purpose...

Centuries of combat experience and muscle memory does that to you. Sometimes you think you see a gun being pointed your way and you duck out of the way, only to realize it was the distant ventilator of a housing unit; not a sniper rifle.

…PTSD and all that.

This time, though it takes a microsecond for my mind to catch up with my body, I can see why I instinctively reacted so.

From behind its back, the shadowy beast pulls out an oblong and partially cylindrical object that I expect is some sort of knife, though I can see certain geometrical similarities to such weapons that I am used to, like guns, although those can take many strange and abnormal forms. I curse my own silliness. If guns existed in this world, the free peoples of Middle-earth would have been conquered long, long before now.

I chance a look behind me, noting the looming well… Perhaps I can hurl my foe back into it, leaving it to tumble into the distant water within. At the very least, even if by some miracle it survives, it will be a while before it can climb back up… if its bones aren't powdered upon impact.

I am still formulating a plan to reengage my opponent when all goes a cold white. Light flashes and blazes from beneath its sword-arms in a bolt of piercing blue energy that narrowly misses punching a hole through my chest.

Adrenaline floods my body anew as mechanical instinct wrestles with my slow mind to make sense of the state of things.

My body didn't back away and dodge because it thought the weapon it pulled out was a gun... My body backed away and dodged because the weapon it pulled out was a gun!

Moreover, from where did it pull such a thing? Weren't both of its hands occupied with defending against me?

Like a dam broken, a flood of awareness deluges my brain. Beyond sight's recognition, sound also comes into clarity.

The cries. The eyes. The short straight swords. The oblong, bespiked protrusions and whining discharge sequence of a shock pistol. The impossibility of wielding a gun when two hands are already holding a pair of blades…

My opponent lowers itself and rushes at me with menacing swiftness… a characteristic scramble that I know all too well.

A flicker of tessellated light manifests into my left hand a firearm of my own.

Thus far, I have resolved to set any and all firearms aside for the sake of our stealthy mission. Nothing would do us more harm than to attract the fiendish followers of Sauron with its thunder.

But, alas, against these enemies, I cannot worry about stealth when death is so near at hand!

I squeeze the trigger twice, both bullets finding purchase in the weapon pointed at me and knocking it from my foe's hand. A third bullet snaps past their cranium, sending their head a-flinching in such a way as to nearly make them stumble across the ground. The krak-krak, krak! of my shooting iron is shattering in this enclosed space, and even my conditioned eardrums sing painfully at its intonation.

Instantly, its charge falters even as the flesh of its forehead meets the warm barrel of my gun and it comes to a mortal standstill.

As if struck by lightning, the sounds of battle suddenly cease, and my voice rises to fill the room with all the power and authority I can muster.

"De go hus dor, rasha ha!" I shout before ringing silence has time to settle, emulating the harsh barking of their foreign language.

At once, many shining eyes turn to me, eerily so in the gloaming murk.

In my left hand I force the barrel of my gun into the brow of my enemy, drawing myself up to my full height and allow the meridian currents of Light to course visibly around me, my eyes glowing as bright or brighter than even their own.

"Ta ne, go na Sha'ir! Ne zu kin kis hus dor, to ne zu zes di dra na!"

My final words, a potent threat, resonate among the crowd as hushed hisses and muttered consonants issue out of the darkness, their eyes turning this way and that to look first at at each other, and then finally all turning to look at one of their number.

The one under my gun.

I turn my head from the many to the singular, meeting their azure, illuminated gaze in the dark. So this is the one they consider their leader?

How convenient.

I examine the creature carefully. It is roughly man-sized, if it stood upright, but it was half crouched, its long gangly arms pressed to the floor as it pushes itself up – slowly – to meet my gaze at level height. Its skin was exceedingly pale for one of its kind, a trait which I attribute to a lingering residence in these sunless shafts.

"Well?" I ask, unsure whether it knows how to speak in common or its own language exclusively. "Dra dorqilum?"

It does not answer, but neither does it look like it intends to resist.

The silence in the room is pregnant, and its continuance seems to be a source of agitation for them; their eyes flit between each other and their leader with quick, fervent glances, though their deference to its decision speaks volumes of their respect… or their fear.

Well, not that fear and respect are mutually exclusive…

After many seconds of solicitude, its brow raises ever-so-slowly and it opens its mouth to speak, razor sharp teeth splitting its maw viciously.

But its voice is low. Not low as in "guttural" or low as in "deep." Rather, it is quiet. So quiet in fact, that I even I can barely here it only an arm's length away. So quiet, I can barely even call it a whisper…

"Velask, Lah zah rus," comes its voice, arms swinging out to its sides in a show of uncharacteristic surrender. "Ne den var di zes lun."

Did… did it just call me by my name?

The biological gears of my mind clink rapidly, seeking purchase upon some iota of knowledge or theory that could explain this aberrant happenstance, but they can find no purchase to move the mighty machine.

I can feel my confusion play on my face, my features scrunching up, my eyes narrowing. How did this one know my name? No, how is it even here in the first place? It shouldn't be here… Neither of us should be here!

A cold realization shivers up my spine as my unease grows by magnitudes; the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end…

...This is not the first time I've pointed a gun at this creature's head.

With a spark of my solar Light, a small spherical Sun snaps onto the ceiling, burning like a flare that never descends. And like the Sun, all is bathed in glorious golden clarity.

The features of the creature in front of me reveal themselves, and…

And I… I know this creature…

The words tumble out of my mouth. "Ne… tas yu…"

I know your name.

I know your face.

I know you.

I gasp with an unsteady breath… and with it comes an airy exhalation of wonder.

"Iylas."

Last edited: Apr 30, 2024

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Black Lister

Aug 12, 2022

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Threadmarks Chapter 13.5: Pardon

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Black Lister

Dec 23, 2022

#361

The Fallen shuffled as stealthily as she could, her bare-clawed footfalls offering little more that barely audible clicks against ancient pavement and overgrown concrete as she made her way out of the town the Humans called Waterview. The twilight of dusk was lost in the black smoke that rose into the sky, fanning red and orange light from the fires beneath.

She pulled her bequeathed leather cloak about her, the cooling night winds starting to chill her already. The uneven stubs of her docked first-arms fit perfectly into the empty sleeves of the thing, while she pulled the front close with her second-arms.

Every so often she would stop, ice in her heart as she watched one or two human warriors slink between streets, their eyes searching for stragglers to pick off like carrion beasts.

But they could not see her, her shimmer-cloak hiding her from view especially well. Add to it, human eyes struggled most between different phases of light. In pitch black or bright day, they worked quite well, but as day turned to night, or night to day, they were not quite so sharp. Doubly so if she was already practically invisible to them, even if their yellow star were to be shining upon her in all its bright grandeur.

She did not dare stop her trek to rest until she reached the outer city limits and she found a small crevice to crawl into and allow her shimmer-cloak to cool down. She could tell the device had been modified by human hands. What effect those modifications had on the device she couldn't tell, only that it was starting to get quite hot as she traveled.

At the very least, even if the humans couldn't see her with their eyes, she'd light up a thermal scope easily enough. So, she set the device on the ground beside her to cool and breathed deeply.

She carefully plucked the small canister of rich ether from her waist and drank deep, greedy gulps. The taste was bliss; even before she'd been traded to the Claws, she'd never had ether so pure and potent before, and certainly never anything worth spitting afterwards.

That she was the lone Eliksni slave in the Baron Kilriks' possession wasn't an accident. The truth was, after Claws were routed in the western lands, there simply wasn't enough ether to go around for everyone, let alone slaves. All other Eliksni had been conscripted on the way to Waterview.

Now they were all dead. She was alive.

What strange fates the Great Machine weaved.

She had survived her servitude, though only in great part because her fellow human slaves were generous in their suffering and offered her their own sustenance.

She doubted any of them understood that food couldn't completely make up for a lack of ether… but it had been enough to keep her alive…

They kept her alive.

And then the Light-thief…

She'd fully expected to die when it had ushered all of its species out of the room, pointing its weapon at her and offering her the chance for her final words to be heard. For a moment, she hoped it might let her go with the others, or perhaps she might slip away in their midst beneath its notice… But that didn't happen.

The Light-thieves were cunning warriors. Valiant and ruthless. So, it did not surprise her that she would die by its hand when it singled her out…

It did surprise her when it let her go.

--

There was a gentle click of sound, and she flinched despite herself.

Her expectation of pain did not arrive.

She waited a moment for it. Perhaps she was simply in shock; numb. Or perhaps she was already dead.

She heard shuffling and dared to open her eyes, seeing that she was still in her own body and very much not dead.

The Light-thief holstered its weapon with a vigorous flourish, spinning the weapon twice around its finger before shoving it deep into its leather skin, pulling off its cloak, and tossing it to her. It draped over her stilled form like a shroud.

"You flee now," it said in very poor Eliksni speech. "Your life is reward."

It… it was just going to… let her go? Did it mean to say that her suffering alongside its people was taken into account?

"B-But I am not of Claws," she stammered, pulling the leather-hide garment from over her head and holding it in her hands like an unsteady father might his first hatchling.

"Claws are dead," it said as a matter of fact. So firm and sure was its response, even in Eliksni-speak, that she felt a chill run up her spine. "Any alive, soon dead also."

She instinctively wanted to refute his assertation, if only because it seemed so impossible to believe. But what parts of her mind that weren't stunned into stupor managed to remind herself that there wasn't much left of the Claws after their calamitous failed raiding campaign in the Sen-ah-gahl region. What few who had survived barely escaped with their chitin attached had rallied to the Barons Kilriks, Baylaks, and Osolisks.

And now, was this Light-thief saying that Kilriks was dead?

A Third of what remained of the House of Claws. Gone to the grave.

Her mouth was desert-dust dry.

"Even if not by Claws, then your people will kill me," she countered, realizing the sound of battle above wasn't this lone Light-thief's doing. Many humans, perhaps even other Light-thieves were waging war on the Claws above… if there were any left.

Before she even spit the words from her mouth, the Light-thief set down a familiar bundle of wires and plates before her. She instantly recognized it as a shimmer-cloak.

She was so very confused. Was this a punishment? Was it a game? Was it a trick? Did it mean to raise her hopes for a moment before it killed her? Did it mean to hunt her like prey as soon as she left its sight? Or were its intentions genuine?

She clicked her mandibles together as she looked down at the leather coat in her hands. If this was a game, she was loathe to try her hand at winning, especially if it meant debasing herself any more than she already had in her service to Claws. She considered her next words carefully, feeling for a way to sus out the nature of the Light-thief's offer.

"…The wilderness is vast," she said at length. "I have no home of my own, and no servitor to supply me ether. I will-"

She was silenced by the metal *clink* of a canister being set before her. It was once white, but now it was caked in filth, and stained with Eliksni blood. Beneath the gore, the emblem of the House of Claws was barely visible. She recognized the canister for what it was, a Captain's private ether ration.

The Light-thief's eyes never once left hers as its five foreign fingers loosened, eventually leaving the cylinder standing before her.

"Live if you want. Die if you don't."

And without another word, it turned and marched out of the room, ascending the stairs from which the sounds of battle were now muted and distant. It paid her no more heed as it disappeared.

--

She realized after a moment that it wasn't sparing her life so much as it was giving her the chance to live or die on her own terms. Though why it had bothered to so-well provision her for its trial was beyond her.

A ration of good ether, a shimmer-cloak to evade enemies, a coat to hide her nakedness and shield her from the elements of this temperamental world… And now a single shock-blade that she gripped tightly in her hands.

It was hardly even worth the metal it was made of, with a dead battery, a dull blade, and a length of only two fingers. But it was something. And something was better than nothing.

Better than dead, at least.

She suppressed a loud cough, her dry tongue sticking to her desert of a mouth. She took the can of ether out from one of the deep inner pockets of her cloak. Her little hands shook as she tenderly opened and took a draught. It was still supremely cold, as expected of a Captain's ration. Immediately she felt her eyes brighten and a surge of energy pulse through her limbs.

If the stars aligned just right, it would be enough to sustain her for the journey and regrow her limbs.

She had to tear the rim of the can from her lips and seal it shut before she drank too much. Her hands trembled as she all but shoved the container away from her. It was beyond wonderful. But she would need to conserve it if she was to survive her journey. She'd never tasted the ether-rich ration of a Captain's stock before, so the extent and speed of her recovery was somewhat uncharted territory.

And speaking of uncharted…

She placed a hand on the shimmer cloak and felt its cool metal under her palm. She looked up, the moon invisible to the eye as it entered that peculiar phase of the month where it hid itself in the planet's shadow.

It was time to move again. With a shimmer-cloak and the cover of darkness, she needed to take full advantage of the coming days and nights to put distance between herself and the territories of the Eye.

She was spared by the incomprehensible mercy of the Light-thief. But it was only one, and the Eye was home to four others, each of which might be just as eager as any other to put a bolt through her brain.

She'd never heard of a Light-thief pitying one of her kind before; if it wasn't mercy, then even more incredibly, she was saved by what she could only conclude was a bout of whimsy.

She wasn't a superstitious creature; she believed in the Great Machine, and that one day she and her people would prove themselves worthy of its blessings once again. But humans had a concept they called "karma," in which they believed if you do good things for others, good things will happen to you.

Of course, she always thought that to be just circumstantial sophistry… The universe was cold and merciless; one good deed done in the dinge and dark wouldn't compel even an iota of the cosmos to piteously reward you.

She was not superstitious.

The Light-thief, chosen of the Great Machine, took pity on her. Not the Great Machine itself. Not the cosmos.

Yes. That was how it was. She was sure of it.

She took a deep breath of the night air, traces of cooked fuel and fire drifting on the winds.

In a brief moment of unguarded exhaustion, she wondered if she would have done the same for him if their positions were switched…

…She couldn't find an answer, even within her own mind. 'Perhaps that is why the Great Machine chose them over us…'

She was not unused to the cruelty of her own people, and it was for that reason she felt a particular certainty in that stray thought.

Cruelty might win back the Great Machine… but would it win its favor?

No. Her doubts were firm.

Such were her thoughts.

But life and the struggle to live were innately cruel. She couldn't avoid that reality…

She wasn't superstitious.

So to survive, she would need to be cruel as well. But... she would repay the life that was saved by an enemy with kindness where she could.

…Just in case…

First, though, she had to survive.

She made her way deeper into the vast wilderness with all the haste her atrophied muscles could muster.

Last edited: Jan 26, 2023

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Black Lister

Dec 23, 2022

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Threadmarks Chapter 14: The Interloper

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Black Lister

Aug 16, 2023

#377

The ringing silence was deafening.

After having been suddenly woken by their Elf companion, the urgency of his sudden waking remained unclear except that it seemed all the tall folk were already awake, aware, and arms brandished in the dark.

Though Frodo had been healed in Rivendell of the knife-stroke, that grim wound had not been without effect. His senses were sharper and more aware of things that could not be seen. One sign of change that he soon had noticed was that he could see more in the dark than any of his companions.

What no one else save perhaps Gandalf could see was the clear unease that sat plain upon the faces of the tripartite wisemen of their group, Aragorn, Lazarus, and Gandalf. Something had touched their nerves unwelcomingly, and they were clearly on edge.

But as his brethren were awakened, they were likewise bidden to silence, and so their Company was brought out of slumber silently, but none-too-gently. Nevertheless, they minded their manners and didn't make a sound. By so doing, Frodo was able to focus his eyes and ears to identify the source of their agitation.

He was the bearer of the Ring: it hung open upon its chain against his breast, and at whiles it seemed a heavy weight. He felt certainty of evil ahead and of evil following; but he said nothing. He gripped tight on the hilt of his sword.

Beyond the vague awareness, he heard – or thought he heard – the sound of scraping stone in the room. For a moment he wondered if the tip of someone's sword was dragging across the walls or the floor, but of those who held brandished weapons, be it surely or not, none were near to touching the inner flesh of the carved mountain. Instead, the eyes of those who could see as well or better than he twisted this way and that, trying as he was to identify from whence the sounds came.

In a moment's time, Frodo realized it was their wariness of the sound itself that had interrupted their slumber.

Scritch, scritch-scratch, scritch.

A sound he could hear with increasing intensity.

And the only place the sound could be coming from was…

He looked at the yawning maw of the well that sat in the center of the room whose depths descended down who knew how far.

And it seemed that he was not the only one to come to that conclusion. As one, the battle-readied of their Company stepped silently towards the edge of the pit to peek over its lip.

And Lazarus, with a hand raise, summoned a light so stark and blinding that shown from the surface of his downstretched hand and into the blackness below. What it revealed was a confusing mess of arms, legs, heads, and teeth. Frodo's initial panic of goblins or orcs was tempered by his rationalization that, although he'd never personally seen either sort of creature before, he knew of their distinctive differences thanks to the many accounts of Bilbo in the retelling of his many famous tales, and none of whatever creatures were climbing up the inside of the well were those.

That comfort however was short lived.

Equally stunned as they were, a moment's hesitation was all they had before the creatures came up like the rising tide, pouring from over the edge in a wave of flesh and shrieks.

Instantly, the light in Lazarus' hand disappeared as he focused on defending against the sudden onslaught. Likewise, the rest were each set upon by one of the fiends, and sometimes more than one as was the case with Aragorn and Gandalf.

In the moment, one of the creatures focused its gaze upon him. It was an eerie face, leathery and full of teeth, and four glowing eyes that shone in the dark. It was hideous, shrieking thing, and it advanced upon him brandishing a short straight blade held aloft.

He raised Sting in response, the clanging of steel preceded by exerted cries from all as battle was suddenly met.

The wretched creature hissed at him as Frodo batted its sword away, diving between its bowlegged posture in a flash and cutting at its calves.

But the quick cuts had been shallow, and weren't enough to bring it to its knees, though it stumbled painfully while swinging at him wildly as it turned. Frodo blocked each strike with careful deflections.

A curious point of order, although Sting had so far failed naught in its nature to illuminate at the presence of orcs and similar servants of the Enemy, it did not brighten even so much as a firefly even when it was locked next to the malformed face of… whatever it was.

And then Frodo cried out in pain as a sudden loudness – a noise like the cracking of a hammer on the mountain's face – pounded in his ears.

Once. Twice. Thrice.

The first two occurred in such close timing to each other that Frodo almost missed the distinction. The third, a half-second later.

The sound was so sudden, so startling, and so stunning, that even his foe recoiled at the sound, its hands likewise pressed to its ears. Or… where its ears should have been.

The singing of swords as they rang against each other gave way to songs of ringing in their ears as they rang like bells in the ensuing silence birthed from the three cacophonic cracks.

But as much as he wanted to recoil and cover his ears, an instinct inside of him instructed him otherwise, gluing his hands tight to his sword. Instead, in exchange for keeping his wits about him, he received the due punishment as his inner ears screamed at him in outrage. That being so, he was also able to watch with flinching gaze as all the vile wretches who'd set themselves upon them turned as if with one mind, their arms rising reflexively, swords brought in front of their faces as if to ward off the noisome rebuke.

It was as if the targets of their malevolence upon which their bizarrely luminous eyes had been focused were suddenly removed from their minds. Indeed, in the confined space of the guardroom, carved out with unyielding stone craftsmanship, the members of the Fellowship whom their spidery-limbed adversaries had set upon were entirely disregarded.

All eyes turned to face Lazarus' cacophonic, triplicate refrain.

Krak-krak, krak! went the thunder from the iron device in his hand astride blinking gouts of spitting fire that flashed in the room like golden lightning. And from his mouth came a strange jumble of sounds that Frodo knew must have been a language of a sort he'd never heard.

It bore – at least in passing – a resemblance to the Black Speech of Mordor. But whereas, as Gandalf had recited it in Rivendell, there was no otherworldly accompaniment of inexplicable phenomenon; The room did not grow darker, or colder. He didn't appear any more grand or terrible after having spoken than before. The power in his words, whatever they were, was in the speech itself. They were not magic words, but for the way their assailants suddenly stopped in their tracks, they might as well have been.

It was surreal. One moment, violence was at hand, and the next it was gone like the wind.

All that was left in the void of noise and action, besides the ringing of his ears, was the tension that hung thickly between Lazarus and one who stood before him.

And then with a flick of his wrist, the wizard tossed to the ceiling a summoned sconce of golden light, where it affixed itself and cast all in its bright luminosity, and everything was brought into proper clarity.

After so much time in the dark, to suddenly be enveloped in the bright light of a small Sun actually sent pain piercing through Frodo's eyes. Indeed, his weren't the only ones afflicted; all heads flinched away from the sudden brightness, arms rising to shield their faces from its source.

The creatures that in the sudden confusion Frodo had tentatively assumed to be some sort of mountain orc or goblin was in fact very different. It was bigger than any orc he'd seen, though that in spite of its hunched posture. It was a mass of weird, wiry limbs, four arms, two legs, and with only three fingers on each hand. Yet on its face, as he had perceived in the dark, four eyes blinked in stupor, and its needle-fanged mouth hissed forth a mixture of vowels and consonants that Frodo suspected must have been curses.

It was a ghastly thing, clothed in rags and armed with short blades that gleamed in the newfound light.

Frodo feared that the respite would be for only a moment; that they would regather themselves and resume the fight…

Only, that did not happen.

Even as the tall folk of their Company stood by with brandished steel, buckler, bow, axe, and wizard's stave at the ready, the creature instead turned away from them, their eyes turning toward Lazarus' show of power and stunning alert; they bared their backs to the foes they had just moments ago set themselves upon. Yet, for the opening given, none of the Company capitalized upon it. Their eyes too were drawn to the foreign wizard whose hardened face was now marked by…

…Bewilderment?

In the weeks that Frodo had known him, Lazarus had shown himself to be an unflappable sort of man, stoic in many ways that led the hobbit to compare him to Aragorn or Gandalf. Certainly not above emotion or affection, but certainly not one to let the unexpected get the better of him.

Yet, as Frodo's eyes focused on his companion, he beheld an expression upon the figure's face that he'd never before seen.

But his eyes were locked forward, upon the creature that stood – or rather, hunched – before him. The device wherefrom the thunder roared was in his hand and pointed down at his foe. If it was some sort of weapon, Frodo could not make sense of its function, save in how his ears poignantly railed against its employ. Yet, like a sword, Lazarus held it down to the four-armed malformed creature who remained all but frozen before him.

Then, in the pregnant silence, it spoke.

And Lazarus' nearly dropped the thing.

--

I can say with certainty that in my long, long life, there have only been five times when I have allowed myself to become overcome by the situation around me; moments when I have been overwhelmed by circumstances beyond my control; where I lost all sense of direction; where I didn't know what to do.

Once when Rigel and I first encountered one another.

Once when our caravan was attacked on our way from the Eye to the City.

Once during Twilight Gap.

Once during the Great Disaster on the Moon.

And once during the Red War when I lost my Light.

Now, as much as I wish I could say otherwise… I believe I have just experienced the sixth instance.

It is… beyond my meager faculties to understand. It is impossible.

No… Not impossible. Improbable, certainly, but not impossible.

But even so, how many improbabilities must occur in succession to defy the population mean? How many outliers must exist before they cease to be outliers? From the perspective of probability and statistics, it was simply incredible.

My eyes, though they see, do not believe.

Even in this golden light, I do not trust my sight. I cannot.

And yet…

"Velask, Lah zah rus," came the words.

"Ne den var di zes lun," spake it thus.

And though I hear its voice… a voice I know… my mind rejects its truth.

Objective truth, Lazarus, isn't dependent on your belief in it. It is so even if you wish it were otherwise. It is not our place as Guardians to shape truth, but rather to study it as it is. The universe lies before us, and we know so little about anything in it. Thus, it is our responsibility to understand its truth. Not our truth. Never our truth. That is the reason the Traveler chose us.

The wisdom of Pujari.

Loath have I ever been to attribute to myself any one classification; it's too restrictive. The moment you call yourself something, the expectations of others box you in and nail you down to a stereotype of their own conception. But, even though that has always been the case, it was Pujari who inspired me to take up the mantle of "Warlock."

And ever since I have struggled to avail myself of the truth of the universe, regardless of what complications might arise or how problematic they may become. And I have, if I may say so, conducted myself accordingly and with faithfulness to that dogma.

But… I must admit… For all my own wisdom, there are times when even I am left at a loss for reason.

Now… is one of those times.

In the shadow of the mountain, I might be forgiven for thinking it only another of its kind; to not recognize it. Its voice however… is a voice I've heard too many times to mistake.

For all the dogma of "acknowledging objective truth" by which I've aligned myself, the tree of disbelief flourishes hale and hearty in my breast.

My doubts are well founded, of course.

Ever since the day realization dawned on me that I was in another world far from home, I immediately considered that perhaps I wasn't the only one to have come here. Absent any awareness of when or how I came to be in this "Middle-Earth," I was sure that there was a strong probability that another Guardian may also be living in this place. Perhaps they'd have been here longer, even. In any case, I couldn't dismiss the possibility that I wasn't the only one to have arrived here.

But when I imagined who that other or others might be, I never once in my wildest imaginations considered… this.

The words.

Words of knowing. Of affection long harbored.

The voice.

Hissing like steam, sounding words not formed for its mouth.

The hair.

Grey as the ash of grand conflagrations. Grey as clouds of midwinter morn.

The flesh.

White as the snow-covered mountain peaks. White as limestone. Pale as salt.

"Ne… tas yu…"

I know you.

"Iylas."

The elicitation of that sound, that name, draws from my breast a surge of joy and bewilderment.

Beyond my disbelief, my contrasting hope beyond hope that this one is who I think it is, exposes the lie of my makeshift stoicism.

That my heart should leap so shamelessly at the notion of a familiar face… am I truly so pathetic?

Never mind that. Let me be pathetic then. I'm too at a loss for words to care.

"I cannot… Can it truly be…?"

But my question needn't be voiced; the very whisper of the name from my lips beckons a joyful hiss from the one across from me. Its back straightens and its gaze rises to meet mine on an even level.

Baring a new scratch here and there, it is exactly as I remember it.

"Your question is mine, Lah zah rus."

Its voice was familiar in the manner of its kind; a rhythmic fit of barking coughs that comprised the Eliksni language. But more than that, its cadence was familiar… Personally familiar. An uninitiated listener might have great difficulty telling one howl apart from another, even between disparate mouths and throats. But, being far more familiar with the language than most, and more than that, surpassingly familiar with this voice in particular…

There is no way I could mistake its voice.

Her voice.

But damn my doubting self, I cannot bring myself to trust my own eyes or ears… an otherwise prudent policy given my occupation.

I reach out with my hand and seize the closest of the four arms that are arrayed before me, drawing it – and its owner – close to me.

The Eliksni elicits a startled hiss… but doesn't make to resist. Instead, the surprise on her alien face simmers into that all-too-familiar suspicion I've come to expect from her. Less than an emotion, it is merely an expression, the same way a human might raise an eyebrow with a playfully exasperated smile on their face. Her – as if (probably actually) divining my intentions – suddenly stiffened stance relaxes and she raises her four arms out to me, as if expecting me to inspect them for authenticity.

Each of them is thin, a natural leanness that belied the inherent strength hiding in their dense muscle fibers. However, they are real. A familiar warmth blooms in my breast at the realization that, no, this is no illusion.

In this moment, three things become overwhelmingly poignant.

The first is relief.

In the instant I understand the reality of the situation… the reality of her… realness… I feel an immense weight I didn't know what there fall from off my shoulders. She may not be a Guardian… Hell, she may not even be human, but now I know there is at least one person I can commiserate with. I am no longer the only stranger in a strange land.

Second is nostalgia.

Far from a stranger, the female alien is as much an old friend to me as any Guardian of the City.

I know her. She knows me.

We understand each other.

And therefore, all compulsion for pretention falls away in an instant. If it were any other Eliksni, I might feel the need to impose myself upon them to gain their compliance. Indeed, that need seems sufficiently abundant in this room full of such four-armed foes… But not so with her.

Never with her.

Third is the return of that same dreadful weight that had just lifted from me, only now it settles in the center of my cranium; born from a myriad surplus of questions to which I can divine now obvious answers. I am anchored by ignorance, and discomfort spawns like locust larvae in my brain.

I have no way of knowing exactly how these conflicting, simultaneous emotions play out upon my face, but I do my best to master my expressions into a mask of something resembling friendliness.

Whatever disconcertion may plague my mind, now is not the moment to reveal it. This is…

Yes...

This is a happy moment.

Unfortunately, my masking skills leave much to be desired, as I feel my forced smile quickly morph into something far more genuine, and the golden shine of my Light all but banishes the shadows from my face.

"Of course it is," I answer at last, breathing out a resigned breath; no matter how much I may wish for answers, they will not come at once. The universe is naturally – notoriously – stingy like that.

"So, first things first. Business or pleasure?" I ask, my eyes noting the eyes now turned upon me – upon us – as we stand in the sudden stillness born from my intervention. My earlier suspicion that this one… she was the de facto team leader seems at a glance to be correct; their gazes flicker back and forth between me and her, as if awaiting a decision from either of us.

I'd said it very clearly, hadn't I?

"I am putting an end to this fight, or I'll will bring your entire House to ruin," as the translation goes.

And unless they were born and raised in caves, I highly doubt they don't know a Guardian when they see one… or at the very least, haven't heard enough cautionary tales in lieu of personal experience. They should either know or at least expect that I am very much capable of following through on my promises.

I take a moment to reproach myself for my oversight; I ought to have known that they weren't Orcs… Neither Glamdring nor Sting had so much as glimmered in the darkness before their attack.

Iylas, her familiar, pale white skin and shell distinct from her fellows even in this artificial light, tilted her head at me curiously, as if contemplating my words.

I give a subtle cock of my head toward her entourage, exaggeratedly raising an eyebrow at her to emphasize my point.

It takes her a few seconds until she eventually – I think – understands.

A hiss sucked between her razor-sharp teeth precede a whispered answer. "For now, business."

I nod at her and holster my cannon onto the magnetic plate at my hip with a simple flourish, spinning it idly around my finger in so doing. It… wasn't an intentional gesture; more of an old habit from the Dark Ages when displays of skill with a deadly weapon were often as effective at deterring violence as their actual employment.

Likewise, I note with some small amount of humor, the single shock pistol in Iylas' right secondary l also found its holster after a flourish of her own.

Not for the first time do I notice how my queer idiosyncrasies have rubbed off on her over the course of time.

And also not for the first time, a passing wonder queries what sort of idiosyncrasies of hers have rubbed off on me…

Our guns put away, our blades follow suit, the steel sliding audibly into their sheaths with a clack-ing finality.

The message was clear.

Hostilities were over.

In response, thoughy confusion plays out clearly upon their alien faces, the many Eliksni in the room hiss in discomfort as they look about themselves at my companions, noting how their weapons were yet to be withdrawn.

However, under Iylas' withering, cerulean glare, they begrudgingly managed to stow their deadly instruments and stepped away from the Company members. In turn, I give a nod to my side to do the same, which they did after several uncertain seconds, and with as much reluctance as our impromptu intruders.

Interestingly, more so even than Gimli, it is Samwise who is last and most loath to sheath his dagger of a sword. However, a placating hand from his hobbit master put him at ease.

Well, maybe not at ease.

More like… at caution.

Indeed, "at caution" was the perfect word to describe the overall air of the room. Would-be-murderers and would-be-murdered couldn't be expected to completely (and naively) drop their guards even when weapons had been put away.

However, Iylas' authority seems absolute, and my fellows' trust equally sufficient…

This will do for now.

Peace thus sufficiently satisfied for the moment, my attention returns to the Fallen female before me.

She seems…

Shorter.

Memory overlays with the moment and I can't help but suspect that she truly has shrunk. Considering the circumstances, I shouldn't really be surprised; I doubt she's been eating well in this place. Indeed, the whole Eliksni cadre appear to be of similar stature, and I don't see a single Dreg among them; each of them bears four arms proudly, though their attire is displayed less so…

Depending on the aforementioned circumstances, they may be starved for ether.

But more than just her physique, her familiar ashen grey mane that, for as long as I have known her, has always touched the back of her neck is now much less kempt. Its luster has vanished, and it now hangs low to the center of her back, a significant length longer than my recollection conjures.

Similar to the state of their clothing, their carapaces and exposed flesh are both soiled and battered.

It's abundantly clear that they've had a very rough go of things.

And knowing the propensity for Fallen to eat human captives… I don't doubt they intended to make a meal of our corpses. Perhaps that had even been the primary purpose of their assault in the first place. They certainly look desperate enough…

"I must offer my apologies," she says after a moment, pressing a three-clawed hand to her breast, a faint smile hidden behind an expression filled with many worries. "I would not have struck so carelessly had I known a Guardian was present."

I raise an eyebrow again and return her meager smirk. "Implying you would have struck more carefully had you known a Guardian was present."

It is less of a question than an accusation.

She released a hissing admission from her mouth in response – a sardonic laugh that said more than words could.

I shrug at her honesty. From her, of all people, I would expect nothing less.

However, certainly the blame does not lie solely with her and hers. A great portion of the fault rest upon my shoulders as well… At least, by my reckoning.

"I too, must apologize. I should have noticed what you were and put a stop to things sooner."

As a Guardian… No, rather, as a Warlock with as much experience as I have, my disappointment in my own ignorance is immeasurable. I expect more from myself; I must always hold myself to a standard greater than that which I hold others unto.

The graciousness of our words and politeness of our tones has become a wonder to our witnesses. The eyes of each Eliksni, human, and human-kin (when not looking amongst each other for signs of expectant betrayal and dishonor) are fixed upon us, myriad expressions betraying their obvious – and very understandable – confusion. I expect they wonder how we have reached such a position of mutual respect for one another so quickly and with so few words or deeds.

If only they knew…

But we haven't the time – and I not the notion – to inform them.

Iylas' mouth widens in a familiar grin. "It is comforting to know we are capable of surprising even you, Lah zah rus."

"Should I have not lived so long at odds with your people, I might not have noticed at all," I answer with a quashed smirk on my lips, after which I add with some slight snark, "And you may take it as praise."

A glint in her eye – pride, amusement, or both – shines for a moment. But her eyes drift to her fellows and to mine, lingering on each for a deliberate moment before returning to me.

"Lah zah rus, I have many, many questions," she announced with a cautious… yet desperate quietude, the expression on her face hardening once again into something more suitably fierce.

I do not wonder after her query, for it runs in my mind even as she asks it; how long has she and her kin been down in these pitched depths? What troubles have they triumphed over? What evils have they needs fled from?

"As do I," I reply candidly, glancing aside at our onlooking crowd. My curiosity is overwhelming, but I bite back my questions before they threaten to spill out too rapidly and too incessantly to halt. Now is not the time to either ask, nor explain. In this sort of situation-

A leathery, calloused alien finger rises just short of my lips to silence me.

"It is not safe here," she says suddenly, casting her gaze to the doorway and the darkness of the mountain's hollow beyond. Evidently she is of the same mind as me.

Those who know Eliksni less intimately might assume their eyes are only an opaque luminance, but the truth is, there are curiously shaped pupils hiding behind their familiar glow, and a skilled observer who knows what to look for can, upon careful examination, catch the subtle shifting of their ocular quartet as they turn this way and that.

And Iylas' eyes are betraying a certain anxiety.

"What's wrong?" I ask, my voice hardening.

She gestures to the doors of the stony portal. "Our scuffle has been less than subtle. I expect we will soon be overrun."

I raise my brow at her curiously. It is true that between the scuffling grunts and clashing of blades, to say nothing of the thunderous gunshots of our weapons, we have made raised quite the ruckus… but what could possibly have heard such a clamor in these empty passages?

My mind is cast to the thoughts I and Boromir shared not even a day ago – to the 'nameless fear' Glóin referred to in his report at Rivendell.

…A solemn grimness weighs down my guts as I realize that, perhaps, I have answered my own question.

"Found? By what?" I ask, turning aside and indicating Gimli, his dark eyes burning like coals in the golden light. "Creatures such as this one?"

Iylas follows my finger and stares for a long moment, taking in the sight of the armored, long-bearded Dwarf. "No. Not like it. Shorter. Thinner. Pale skin and frail frames. But they are many and are doggedly ravenous."

An image of the 'growlers' – of whom I slew many a roving band upon my first weeks after arriving in Middle-Earth – pops into mind. 'Orcs', as I have long since learned they are called in the common tongues of the world. At the very least, if she is describing orcs, the vague description is certainly not inappropriate…

But now I'm just hypothesizing.

"Hunched frames, squat noses, pointed ears?" I ask for clarity, gesturing to each of my facial features in turn.

Iylas nods approvingly. "And gnawing teeth, yes."

A frown covers my face.

If orcs are roaming the tunnels of Khazad-dûm, then clearly, it is no wonder that Gimli's kin have not reported in. They either must still be having a rough go of things, or…

I cast my eyes towards Dwarf's face, recalling the smiling cheeks and joyful boisterousness with which he spoke when regaling our Company of Dwarvish lore and legend.

…Or things have gone terribly wrong.

I return my eyes to her. "How many?"

She shakes her head at me, surely anticipating my intent. "Too many. Many hundreds. Thousands, perhaps, if you force from me an estimate. Both near and in passages abroad. They gather quick to the slightest hint of trespassers. I have no doubt they will soon be upon us."

Her voice was soft, but her tone took on a distinct, undisguised urgency that I easily catch.

"We are compromised here," I say, less a question than a statement.

She gives a single emphatic nod with a hiss from between her teeth.

I scowl. I suppose that is to be expected. Stealth, while our chiefest weapon, has always been our greatest, and most fleeting luxury…

"Then… perhaps you know of a safe place to hide?" I ask, a suspicious hope tinged upon my tone.

Before the words have even left my mouth I see a crinkle in the corner of her eyes and her head nods ardently. Had she been waiting for me to ask? Or had she been wanting to mention it herself?

"Indeed, yes! Safe and secure. The way winds through tunnels the gnashers do not patrol and leads to chambers they do not know."

Safety! Such safety is needed if indeed orcs do prowl this Dwarven mountain home… Now, perhaps, a Dwarven home no longer.

But though for a moment I feel the security and assurance of a friend, old and trustworthy, I realize that my gaze is too narrow, and I note with distinction the uneasiness of the many many-limbed lingering around me, clawed fingers itching and twitching about the hilts of their short, vicious blades…

My eyes again meet with hers. "If you will lead yours, then mine will follow."

It takes only a moment for her quick-witted mind to catch my drift, and she nods with meaningful depth. "Then I will lead."

I return her nod, hoping my eyes betray a piercing intensity that I've been told on occasion they have a tendency to hold. If they do or don't, she turns away and barks with intensity, drawing the attention of all her four-eyed followers, and I likewise raise my hand and swing it in a circle to round up my companions of the Fellowship.

Our species separate into two groups, the Fallen flowing to Iylas' commanding dialogue and Man-kin-kind shifting, albeit uneasily, to my side. Their eyes cast wary, distrusting glances at the monsters as each all but brushed shoulders in passing, aggression hissing from alien mouths, and stern promises of violence in the eyes of the veterans of our troupe.

But the sifting completes without incident, and Boromir is quick to question me.

"What the devil are these malformed fiends?! Ne'er have I seen their like before in my life!"

"Nor have I," Aragorn agreed. It appears for a moment as if he wishes to speak more on the matter… perhaps add more flowery pejoratives on top of his Gondorian companion's. Instead, he asks, "But you know their tongue, and well it seems to me. What was said? What peace have you brokered us?"

"A moment's peace if nothing else," I caution. "This is a…" I struggle to find a less pedantic turn of phrase, "…a strange twist of fate. One for which, I admit, I have no explanation, though I strain myself to find one."

Indeed, my mind is boggled in its entirety, and I can feel with keen, unpleasant awareness as all my other faculties suffer for it.

I shake my head, vainly hoping to shrug off my bewilderment. "We… They say that orcs patrol the deeper halls and will soon be drawn to this place. They are offering, I believe, to guide us to their shelter."

At the notion, all eyes are focus upon me in bewilderment.

"Shelter? Shelter?! You would bid us to make rest aside those befanged, gangling…?" Gimli's words fall away as he struggles to describe them. Even in the golden shine of my Light, they bear a strong resemblance to orcs and their foul kin, in large part due to their inhuman visages, hissing exhalations, and hunched postures.

"They are not orcs," I clarify before Gloin's son can summon any additional pejoratives, emphasizing each word with a finger that I jab in his direction. The stern tone with which I correct him leaves the rest of the party at a loss for reproach, and I realize that an explanation is surely in order. However, it will have to wait for a spell…

I focus instead on the here and now. "Moreover, is anyone wounded?"

The Fellowship seems to my eyes to be none the worse for wear. The brief bout of violence had been sudden in coming, and blessedly short. However, my experience with these aliens in particular assured me that even a moment is all that was needed for a shockshiv to find its way between your ribs.

A round of hands patting down limbs and heads shaking in the negative comforts me however, and I spy nothing to insinuate they might have been mistaken. Adrenalin was a hell of a thing, and it certainly was possible they simply didn't know that they were wounded… yet.

For that matter, did the indigenous inhabitants of Middle-Earth even have adrenal glands? No one seems to be shaking…

Perhaps that is thanks to the dregs of the miruvor Gandalf had offered earlier.

If they truly are fine, then I see nothing to do except chalk it up to some sort of miracle. Even none of the Eliksni appear to sport any obvious wounds!

I wait a few extra moments to allow their minds to focus on themselves, just to be sure. However, even after several seconds, it seems that there really is no doubt among them, and I am left to trust they know their bodies best.

"Good. That is very fortunate."

"What are they, Lazarus?" Frodo asks of a sudden, his curiosity beyond piqued, hand over his chest as he fought to catch his breath alongside his kin who were likewise short of breath. "You know what they are not, and you speak in words they understand, so surely you must know what they are."

I cast my gaze between Frodo and the subjects of his curiosity beyond.

"I will explain in time. For now, simply know that they are not necessarily our enemies."

"Not enemies? I would doubt you very much if you mean to say that they are our friends!" Gimli's gruff voice growled out skeptically, which I cannot reproach him for. Even Legolas nods in agreement beside him.

"I mean no such thing," I assure. "I only ask that each of you place in me your trust."

A cumulative chorus of discomforted hisses erupts from the creatures across the room, and our heads turn quickly to regard them, only for them to be silenced by a harsh cry from a singular voice in their midst, a voice which rings familiar even in its diminished volume.

"And if it's any consolation, they seem to be of the same mind as you," I mutter loud enough for my troupe to hear.

Nine pairs of eyes glance between each other uneasily, settling upon Gandalf's hunched shoulders, silently assigning to him the role of adjudicator in this matter. Instead, he takes a deep breath and knits his bushy silver brows together, pursing his lips thoughtfully as he turns his stormy grey eyes toward mine.

Our gazes meet and linger a while.

Among those members of the Fellowship whom I consider peers, Gandalf is the only one by whose face I cannot discern his thoughts. Even Aragorn who is as stoic as any Guardian and Legolas whose unflappability is default are not so unreadable as Gandalf… though, I don't wonder if perhaps that's simply because I cannot begin to imagine what sort of thoughts are sifting through the Istari's mind.

It is a long moment before a deep sound rumbles in his chest and he gives a stern, short nod. "Very well. You seem to know more than we, so I will defer to your judgement, Lazarus. But I will not say that it comforts me to do so given these figures' less-than-fair forms."

I don't really blame him. Theirs was not a very attractive species… at least, not in the conventional sense. And given the general nastiness of those foes who have allied themselves with Sauron here in Middle-Earth which Gandalf is well acquainted, I have no rejoinder; in this world, there is a frequently literal relationship between one's moral alignment and their appearance. It's comparing apples to oranges – elves to orcs.

It would be very easy for me to quote that ages-old adage, "don't judge a book by its cover," but I'm not so arrogant as to not recognize the extreme hypocrisy of my doing so. After all, I used to be very, very racist against the Fallen myself…

A rhythmic click-clack of sound signaled the approach of familiar feet, and we as one turn to regard the emissary.

"Everything in order?" I ask in her tongue.

She nods simply, responding in the same. "Are yours prepared to follow?"

"If yours are prepared to lead."

She hisses through her teeth. With the Light-born star affixed to the ceiling casting her face in shadow, it's difficult to make out the exact expression on her face, but I wonder if I don't see a smile threatening to show on her face as she gestures toward the deep black shadows of the empty well from which she and hers had first sprung. "Then come. We must put distance between us and this place."

She turns and takes a step toward the hole and stops. She turns her head to look over her shoulder and angles her luminant, cerulean eyes towards me.

This time the elusive smile on her face is as clear to my eyes as the gleaming silver of the brightest moon.

--

While the Eliksni of her party were swift to clamber their way like spiders down the well, firm claws and strong muscles fixing them to it like so many insects, the humans who followed after were far less capable. It took much effort for the Guardian and the taller, fairer looking one to aid the old, the young, and the bulkier of their kind down the long shaft and into its empty depths by means of anchor and rope.

In any other instance, Iylas would have had very little patience for their sluggishness… except that these were no ordinary circumstances.

She waited quietly as one by one the humans met them at the bottom of the well, the tall, rugged one the last to make the long precarious decent.

"This way," she announced, calling upon her knowledge the common human language which had for far too long gone unused to direct them to follow in her footsteps. It had been quite a long time since last such strange words had slipped between her teeth; she hoped she did not sound overly harsh…

However, as if to compliment her efforts, the Guardian gestured her forward, speaking in fluent Eliksni that betrayed an unsettling familiarity with her mother-tongue. "Lead on, then."

It was eerie. Moreso than the utterance of the common human language, how long had it been since she'd stood the presence of a Guardian…? How long had it been since she'd stood in the presence of a Guardian who wasn't actively trying to kill her?

If it weren't for the fact that she could see his face, the sight of the angular lines of the armor, the hand-cannon tucked into his robes, that dangerous, world-wise expression that displayed itself in the human's narrowed eyes, his close-knit brow-fur, and the sudden snapping of his ocular organs onto the slightest movement that was deemed out of place would have prompted her scurry away with all due haste and abandon.

The way his two eyes seemed to keep all four of her arms in sight at all times left her feeling exposed, as if every movement she made – even more subtle and minute – were being observed. His steps were firm, but light, emphasizing an uncanny confidence and preparedness in the event any of the Riisborn were to try their hand at violence.

She let out a breath. She'd gotten too used to the filthy creatures whose presence dominated these subterranean halls and chambers; she'd forgotten what it meant to be in the same general vicinity of a Guardian.

All around her, the hissing exhalations of her kin filled the space, echoed by the breathier sighs from their newfound entourage. It set her nerves on edge. After spending so much time with her own species, the sound and sight of anything not Eliksni triggered immediate compulsions of wariness.

…She swallowed down her anxiety and resolved to acclimate herself accordingly.

Through time and twisting tunnels, she led their joined troupe until at last they came to a long section of wall, inconspicuous among the long, carved sides of hallways that formed small highways beneath the mountain.

With many eyes peering deep into the darkness both before and behind them in either direction, a whisper of confirmation passed around the Rissborn; the coast was clear.

Iylas raised her hand to the wall, feeling its cool stoney texture as she ran her three-fingered palm across it until she felt the material suddenly fall away and her hand passed through the partition as if it wasn't even there.

Because it wasn't.

She turned and gestured to the Guardian. "Here," she whispered and walked through the illusory wall.

As she entered the holographically hidden passage, she turned to regard her followers. Her Eliksni kin were unfazed by the familiar procedure, but the eyes of the others were wide with astonishment as she, from their perspective, had suddenly walked through a solid stone surface.

Lazarus was less astonished, though she caught a subtle nodding of his head joined by an arched brow. A sign of approval.

The other Eliksni walked forward, following her steps into the illusory passage until only two remained at the rear of the party, waiting for their human-kin charges to follow suit. The small stout one, armored with thick steel and armed with a broad-headed axe, blew out a breath of astonishment and spoke in a thickly accented voice that she couldn't catch. Indeed, each of them seemed to bear a countenance that betrayed their disbelief.

All except for Lazarus, who turned to them with a queer smile on his face.

--

Of course it would be something like this. For the duration of our little trek, my mind had raced with various scenarios that would have justified the existence of our new Eliksni in these halls of Khazad-dûm. But alongside "how did they get here?", I also considered "how have they survived here?" as well. Now it seems I have a small answer.

A holographic partition hiding away their own little haven from prying eyes. How many times had they used the same trick back home? I chuckle to myself as I remind myself that, regardless of where we find ourselves in the midst of this strange convocation, Eliksni are still Eliksni. That, at least, is strangely comforting.

"Hooo…!" I hear Gimli exclaim behind me as the familiar form of Iylas' ashen flesh vanishes beyond the veil. "By what means of magic or sorcery is this so…?!"

He walks forward, placing a gloved hand against the stone just to the side of where the hidden entryway begins, feeling the cold rock until his hand sinks into the holographic lie like a stone sinks into water. He hastily pulls his hand back and examines it, finding it to be wholly undamaged.

I chuckle and pat him on the shoulder. "Fear not master Gimli. This is a common trick these fellows use. And it is not magic, though to your eyes it must seem so. Here, I shall go first."

I brush past him bracing myself as the image of the wall grows closer until my mind screams at me that I will hit the finely detailed wall before me face-first. But, true to its nature, I pass through without injury.

On this side, I see to the side a series of cables that twist across the floor back into the hidden passageway, no doubt connected to the generator that powered the illusion. I see the Eliksni who had had passed through before us. And I turn to see the illusory wall as a fine film; a thin veil that was the only betrayal that it was there in the first place. I see the shocked and concerned faces of my companions.

I take a step forward until my head emerges from the partition, much to the shock of the Fellowship. I smile at them and wave to them. "Come friends! It is safe to pass through."

I'm loath to admit that their reactions are amusing. The seriousness of our circumstances aside, I afford myself the emotional room to smile as Gimli, Legolas, and Boromir stare at the passage with expressions of disbelief, as Aragorn and Gandalf seem to be trying to work out what manner of magic this illusion must be and how it is done, and as the hobbits, lost for words, merely behold the trick as some sort of miracle beyond their comprehension.

None of them seem to believe me that it isn't any sort of magic at all, but rather a product of science – the innovative use of natural elements…

Gandalf is the first to follow after me, holding his gnarled staff before him as the film-like veil envelop his body like a bubble. Then Aragorn, then Gimli – though as a Dwarf, his astonishment regarding the detailed fidelity of the mimicked stonework left him at a loss for words. Then the hobbits are ushered forward by Boromir and Legolas, the former eyeing our Eliksni escorts with earned mistrust. Not that I hold it against him; if the sight of them weren't so common back home, I'd probably view them similarly. It's a natural human reaction to sharp teeth, claws, and a visibly predatory disposition.

It can hardly be helped.

Last to enter are the two lingering aliens, their eyes glancing both ways down the outer hall, likely to be sure we weren't followed. The company looked amongst each other as if in disbelief that they were, in fact, unharmed. But already our white-skinned guide was going ahead, her three-clawed feet clicking against the stonework floor in slowly diminishing echoes while the rest of our troupe remain just beyond the hidden threshold.

If I had to guess, I would wager she is heading ahead to warn any additional guards of our arrival.

Not for the first time do I wonder just how many of them there were… Seven total had emerged from the darkness of Khazad-dûm's depths.

Are there more?

Are there not?

I wait with my friends for several minutes before Iylas' appears once again and we are beckoned forth.

We are led past several chambers and rooms – some empty, some stashed with alien equipment of varying purposes – until we come to a larger chamber that can easily accommodate fifty or so occupants. Four large pillars occupy portions of the square room equidistant from each other between which scaffolding is braced, offering an artificial second level to the space. On that level more Eliksni stand, as well as many on the ground floor. The center of the room is dominated by a large amount of jumbled Fallen technology, with varying readouts spitting light across the room alongside several wall-mounted illuminants. A quick head count nets approximately three-dozen or so heads. A few less perhaps.

Strangely, the only heads I see are those of Dregs and Vandals… not a single Captain in sight. Try as I might to find such a towering figure, I find none to speak of. Instead, the many small Eliksni gather around us as we approach, each of their four individual eyes narrowed in suspicion and mistrust, their mouths hissing warningly as we come to a stop before a dangerous looking semi-circle of their number.

Shanks hover above them in the air, some apparently retrofitted to serve tasks unrelated to combat, though most carrying a fitted Wire Rifle that was not-so-subtly aimed our way.

In addition to their absent Captains, I likewise do not see any Servitors, which despite our current predicament concerns me. Lacking a Servitor, how were they getting their necessary ether?

Perhaps the shortage of any Captain-sized Eliksni was the answer to my question…

Iylas stands at the head of the alien throng, facing us, her eyes glancing to her side where another Eliksni stands apart from the crowd, and we are brought to a halt in front of them.

This second Eliksni who stands are her side is just a little taller, sharing – in stark contrast to Iylas' pale while body and hair – the common darker colors of his people. I say "his" since eyes as well familiarized with Fallen sexual dimorphism as mine can easily tell the difference.

Many eyes look this way and that worryingly… questioningly… Some approached from other rooms with excited expressions that only I among our Fellowship can read. Knowing Eliksni culture as well as I do, perhaps they think their next meal has arrived. But as soon as they catch a glimpse of us, their excitement fades, and their salivating mouths shut in a stupor.

The tall folk each have their hands ready to draw their weapons as a moment's notice. Boromir's eyes shift to me and mine to his, and I give him a nod of assurance. It does nothing to relax him, but his eyes break from mine and he regards his surroundings again, shield held before him, hand still on his sword, still sheathed.

At last, Iylas speaks her arms spreading to gesture to us and to all. "These ten here are to be treated as guests," she announces, absent any sort of fanfare. "Not to be harmed, but to be accommodated."

Her words bring hisses and barks of astonishment and confusion from the crowd. She makes a motion to quiet them and continues. "Among them is a Guardian. Lah zah rus, death knell of the House of Claws, Shadow of Wingel Valley, Sun of Luxemburg, slayer of Oryx and his brood."

Un-hushed whispers and furtive glances roil amongst the crowd. I raise a brow at Iylas silently, half amused, half curious. It's been a long time since Wingel Valley… I never knew I earned a name for it.

Clearly, those with sharp eyes had been wary of me the moment I'd come into view. Despite my robes, the clean, angular lines of my black armor were distinct from those of my companions, and those who hadn't noticed before now did.

Three-fingered hands clutched at weapons that were either drawn or holstered, and each one I catch in my gaze tenses with fear and danger.

I step forward and gesture to Iylas pointedly. "And friend to Iylas of the House of Dusk," I reply in their own language causing more murmurs to rumble through the crowd. If there is any lingering doubt in their minds that I am a Guardian, I'm sure they've quickly abandoned it.

Like recognizes like, and we wayward beings who find ourselves far from our homes are keen to the tells which betray our true natures. We are all from Earth, the home the Eliksni people have taken to calling their own, and the home which is mine by first- and second-birth.

Just as I know them for what they are, they know me for what I am.

However, as the peanut gallery mulls over this sudden revelation, the one beside Iylas steps forward, speaking softer than I would have expected.

"Not of House Dusk. Not any longer."

It was a harsher voice than I would have expected from one so small, masculine and gravely. He fingers the purple garb that clothes him. "We're far from home… Ours, and yours. Dusk is there. And we are here. Therefore we cannot be Dusk. We're just… us."

I ponder his words and give him a slow, assenting nod. "As you say." Not for the first time do I wonder just what series of events led them to being in this Middle-Earth in the first place… Maybe they're wondering the same thing about me. Maybe they hope I have an answer for them.

"So… these we cannot eat?" came a question from the crowd, one stepping forward and cradling their stomach. She appeared to me to be quite thin, even for a Dreg.

They were met with a deluge of warnings and denials, some whispering reminders that I am a Guardian, and that if she wanted to try to eat me, she was welcome to try her hand at it. As I notice the particularly desperate expressions of those who surround me, I'm sure it really would be welcome for everyone else; one less mouth to feed meant more food to go around.

But that leaves me with a question of my own. "'These?'" I ask, turning my head toward Iylas.

"Yes," she replies in English, her eyes blinking away from mine for a brief moment. "Our supplies are… limited. Those who we catch… We…"

She fixes her eyes on me purposefully. "…We do not waste."

I regard her for a long moment, my eyes flitting to the murmuring crowd periodically. Centuries of enmity exist between our peoples. Centuries. And the Fallen's penchant for eating their captives is well known among humanity; how many stories do parents tell their children about behaving or else the Fallen will come through their windows in the middle of the night and snatch them up for a snack? And I, among others, have been alive long enough to know firsthand the wanton transgressions of the House of Rain.

No doubt it will be a point of contention if ever peace is had between our peoples. However, I also know of… at least one Guardian who has returned the favor.

Hell, you point that thing at me, all I can think is how good it'd taste with garlic butter. Mm-mmm!

"I thought as much," I admit. I pretend not to notice her wince at my resigned tone. She always has been a touch sensitive to my opinions of her… but I suppose that makes sense considering. "…Given the circumstances I won't hold it against you."

It takes a moment before she nods at me, as if she were contemplating whether or not I was being honest or polite. Her shoulders do not relax, so I have my suspicions on which one she settled on.

"In any case, you… look shorter than I remember. I suppose I shouldn't ask if you've been eating well…"

"Our ether runs thin," she admits quietly, though I imagine that with the obvious sorry state of her entourage that its no real secret. "And meat is…"

She hesitates for a moment, measuring my expression for some hint of… something… before continuing. "…It comes and goes."

"Understood," I answer, hoping to again emphasize my sympathy of their situation. "Sadly, we have only enough rations for ourselves. We had expected a three-day journey through these mines. Any more and even our resources will be strained."

At this, her head tilts – a show of piqued interest – and she takes a sudden, eager step close to me. "Three days… you say? You mean you know the path through? The path out?!"

Hope sparks audibly in her voice as she trails off to a whisper, her face growing close to mine conspiratorially. It occurs to me that, however long these Fallen might have been here, they must have been seeking a way out all this time… however long that's been.

"Yes and no. I do not know the way; I am only a follower. Our guide, however, has passed through this realm before." I gesture with a hand to Gandalf, and he steps forward, quick to pick up his cue. "I present Gandalf the Grey, our traveling guide."

Iylas' hissing breath catches in her throat. Her quartet of eyes run up and down the length of the wizard, noting his wizened form, titular grey cloak, and staff. She also notes, with surprise, the elegant hilt of his sword, still sheathed in its scabbard on his hip.

"You are… old."

Her words catch me off guard and I fail to suppress a snort, for which I turn away in embarrassment, a smile suddenly cracking my deliberately cool façade.

I was not expecting that.

Gandalf, however, seems to take it in stride. Actually, the bluntness of Iylas' observation may very well have humanized her… in a manner of speaking. He leans against his staff as he bows his head in greeting. "Indeed, I have walked this earth for many years; many lifetimes of Men, and that time as afforded me boons of knowledge and experience, not least of which being the skills with which to treat with strangers.

Iylas considers his words for a moment before cocking her head towards me as if asking for confirmation.

I nod in affirmation. "It is true. You may safely treat him with the same regard you would treat any one of my kind."

I apply a tone of pointedness as I speak, narrowing my gaze at the Eliksni female knowing she would understand me. While I don't know for sure how much English any of her gathered companions know, I have a particularly informed knowledge of her fluency at least; she is certainly smart enough to pick up on nuance.

'If you wouldn't want a Guardian as an enemy, then you won't want him as one either.'

She once again nods her head at me, slower this time. She returns her gaze to Gandalf and gives a brief but appropriately deep bow. "Velask, Gan dalf," she greets in the familiar common tongue, then, taking two steps back, draws a pair of knives from her waist, giving an immaculate ireliis bow – the greeting of her people.

The drawing of her blades naturally prompts Aragorn and Boromir to reach for their own swords, and for Gimli's axe-hand to stiffen, and they might have leapt into action were it not for my raised hand of assurance (or caution, depending on your perspective).

As Iylas completes the greeting ritual, her blades return to her belt and my companions (reluctantly) lower their raised guard.

"It is an honor-bound greeting of respect," I explain quietly, putting them more at ease… though not entirely so. In the same way I feel when hearing folklore from Gandalf's mouth, I imagine they must feel hearing me explain things about creature they've never seen before. Perhaps it is more that – rather than me knowing - Gandalf not knowing is the source of their unease. Well, that and being surrounded by strange, rather vicious and uncouth looking creatures.

Probably a bit more of column B than column A…

At my explanation, Gandalf regards the female with a sheepish, but warm smile. "Indeed! And I would return such a greeting in kind, but for my ignorance of your manners. It is strange indeed that I do not, for though I would not dare to claim all is known to me in this world, there is very little that I am at least unfamiliar with. You and your… people, I'm afraid, are altogether new to me."

"As well they ought to be," I say, drawing Gandalf's gaze away from Iylas, "for they are denizens of my home; these are the Fallen I spoke of in Elrond's house. Though, properly named, they are Eliksni."

Gandalf ponders my words for a moment, and I can almost see his mind calling back to that time and place to recall my words as I had spoken them. It doesn't take long as his mouth opens in a silent "ahh" and he nods his head in understanding. "Indeed, you did speak of them. 'Four-armed' you said, didn't you? 'With fangs and claws and sharpened swords.' Yes, I now remember it quite clearly! I ought to have noticed sooner, though I cannot say that I ought have expected to see such a one, least of all in this of all places."

I wonder if by "here," Gandalf means in the depths of the Mines of Moria, or rather in Middle-Earth at all. Certainly, I cannot blame him either way. After all, even I had not expected such an improbable meeting either.

Not in a million years…

"Though, if I recall correctly, did you not say that not all… Eliksni were friendly to your people?" Gandalf asks, sounding the foreign word out with a remarkably accurate accent. I suppose when you know as many languages as the old wizard, proper enunciation becomes a point of order. If nothing else, it indicates to me an interest to learn their language, which is… strangely encouraging.

"I did," I admit, turning and looking over the gathered aliens who formed the mostly-circular throng around us, eying their faded purple and amethyst colors warily. "It seems providence is on our side this day, and in more ways than one."

"Indeed," the Iylas agrees gesturing the cloth that hung between her legs, her fingers indicating the sigil stitched upon its face. "We are… were… of the House of Dusk, opposed to the Light-thie-" Her words hitch to a halt, and she turns her head aside with a feigned cough – a distinctly human habit.

"The humans," she corrects.

"But you are fortunate," she repeats, gesturing to Gandalf and our Fellowship who stands behind him watching and listening. "One, that I am captain of this force. And two, that you are in the company of Guardian Lah zah rus. All Eliksni in this system know of him; Slayer of Skolas, of Crota, of Oryx, Breaker of Wolves and Devils, Claws and Kings, and-"

"That's not necessary," I hold out my hand to silence her, casting a glance back at my companions warily. Gandalf and Elrond might be more aware of the evils I have contended with, but even they do not know that much, much less the rest of my company. "…I had not disclosed all of that to them."

She blinks at me with all four eyes, bewildered. "You hide your accolades…?"

I eye her pointedly. "You and I both know that a Dreg too bold gets docked. Better not to boast of my strength before I have need to show it."

She takes a step forward. "But you are no Dreg…!"

"No. But there are powers in this world – which you do not know – who would see me cut down if they knew of me. So, I would rather not announce myself to the world with every introduction I make if it can be helped."

A growl emanates from her throat, but reluctantly she nods, taking a step back. "…If you insist."

I sigh breathily and shrug my shoulders, switching back from Eliksni to English. "Besides, even if I cared to boast, it would mean little. This place – this world – is not Sol. Not Earth. Those names are as foreign to them as theirs are to me – to you."

At that revelation her four eyes go wide before quickly narrowing again, as if her surprise was only anecdotal at best.

"I.. see…" she mutters quietly, her two secondary hands coming together to top their claws against each other. "That would explain much. No satellite reception - no positioning systems. No communications. No answer to our calls for help. No one… listening."

Her eyes flick up, and then to each of her compatriots around us. "Does this mean we are… alone?"

I see a flicker of forlorn sadness in her eyes, and I know she asks for the sake of her kin around her. I, however, cannot give her a full affirmative nod. "A few hours ago, I thought I was alone. A few hours ago, I would have said yes." I gesture to the room. "But now I see that that is no longer true."

I see the muscles of her face tense, even as her face descends dejectedly, her claws clicking together thoughtfully. Whatever she is thinking, I do not interrupt, though I give a short glance to her second-apparent, who in turn turns his head to her as well. However, he also seems reticent to disturb her thoughts…

Presently her head rises, and the uncertainty that had masked it only moments ago was gone; replaced by something akin to determination.

She straightened her back, raised her head, and spoke loudly for all to hear. "Tonight," she began in English, which the Eliskni at her side – quick witted, it seems – immediately translates in their own tongue, "we welcome these humans to our shelter. They will eat with us and sleep with us, and no blade or gun will be shown to them. Violators will be swiftly and ju… ju… ju…

She stumbles a moment, her tongue clicking in annoyance and she casts a glance my way with unreasonable expectation. Nevertheless, I fill in her unspoken query.

"Judiciously."

"…judiciously punished!"

All around us murmurs break out, but to my ears they are not so much murmurs of dissatisfaction as they are murmurs of simple confusion – of a poignant lack of understanding. However, I also hear – among those who seem to be more familiar with the English language – some speculate that we are being treated well in hopes that we might share such information that would lead them out of these mines.

Certainly, though I have not consulted with the Fellowship, I intend to do just that anyway… Not for the peanut gallery though. Not really. Rather, for-

"Lah zah rus."

I turn my head back to the speaker of my name, spying Iylas retreating a short distance away and gesturing to me respectfully.

"I would speak private words with you. Please."

Suppressing an knowing grin, I place a hand to my breast and nod my head to return her respect and following after her, but not before turning back and speaking in Sindarin.

"I do not think they will betray their command and summon violence. But mind your pockets. They are deft and opportunistic thieves."

Seeming to catch my meaning, Gandalf gives a nod, a motion echoed by those others who likewise understand the common Elf language and accompanied by wary glances to their right and left. My eyes fall to Frodo, who I see place his hand against his breast where hangs the Ring.

…I'll make sure to routinely ask if it's still there.

The crowd parts before Iylas to make way, a pale ghost in a sea of dark chitin, and I trace her steps as she leads me to a chamber a short ways away that is partitioned only by a thin sheet which bore the gold and purple Dusk emblem. She pulls the flimsy thing away and beckons me inside. I duck my head as I enter.

The space is dimly lit, with only small lamps glowing next to key bits of furniture compelling my eyes to adjust again from the comparatively brighter central chamber without. It's a ramshackle mess of technology and garbage. A desk made of scavenged wood bears bits of this and that; some sort of signal booster that might be fitted onto a larger transceiver, I think. Power cores and oblong, spheroid storage tanks are strung up along the ceiling in durable netting. A few scrimshaw chairs and a table sit on one side of the room, and on the other is strung a hammock suitable for an Eliksni of her size.

It's one of the most pathetic shelters I've seen in a long, long time.

I regard it all with a long turn that lets me take in the scene of the room in full. "It looks like you've had a rough go of things-"

I'm silenced by two pairs of hands that grasp my arms – two hands on my biceps, two on my wrists. Startled, I raise an eyebrow at the suddenly less authoritative looking Eliksni in front of me.

She holds me like that for a moment… perhaps a moment too long. I don't wonder what's going on in her head as she remains suddenly still.

Here, away from prying eyes, she craves an honest reunion...

"Lazarus, I… I…" she stammers with a shaking, choked, voice, her eyes narrowed as she struggles to reign in the flood of emotions she has (doubtless) been withholding since she first realized my identity only a short hour-and-a-half ago..

Her grip on my limbs loosens slightly.

"It's… It's... good to see you again."

My surprise falls away and I feel a smile spread across my face. It is an affectionate smile I share of precious, precious few.

"It is good to see you too, Iylas."

"This is not a dream, right? You are… real? Here?" Her question betrayed a subtle vocal hitch. In a human it would be like a swallowed sob, or a shaking voice, but more suited to an Eliksni's vocal biology.

I raise an eyebrow at her and smile with humor in my voice. "That depends. Do your hands often lie to you and tell you someone is there when they aren't? No? Then believe the 'me' you have in their grasp, and know I am very much real."

I realize it's a little unfair of me to act so coolly. If the situation were just slightly different, it might be me asking her with while choking back an emotional outburst. However, teasing each other is a part of our dynamic, so… I might excuse myself by calling it a reflex or a compulsion… even though it's a very poor excuse regardless.

However, the bite of wit or irritation doesn't return, leaving us instead in an awkward sort of silence until at last she opens her mouth to speak again.

"A-Apologies…" she murmurs, mastering herself in real time as I watch the vulnerability that had escaped be quashed down under a mien of pride and determination.

"I thought… I thought… Well, things… things have not gone so well for us," she starts slowly shifting from affectionate reunion to business proper so quickly that I know she's doing it to prevent herself for showing her true emotions.

Once again, I do not wonder why. All evidence points to her being the de facto leader of this band of Fallen. And as Dusk is a house made out of necessity – an aggregation of all Eliksni from all houses – it was home to some of the most vicious, cunning, violent, and ambitious creatures that remained of their species. I don't know what sort of mixed up composition of those qualities comprised her entourage, but I expect she has had to present herself as the unassailable leader of their unit.

In such a case, sentiment was hardly a luxury she could afford; a weakness she couldn't show.

"No, I mean, I…" I bite my tongue as I realize I probably should have responded honestly just a moment ago. Returning her honest emotion with wit was… not… the play…

But I have already spilled the milk…

"How did you even get here?" I ask, sighing at my own blunder disappointedly.

I hadn't expected her to take my rebuttal so seriously…

She turns away from me, scraping her toes across the floor as she shuffled over to the lonely desk, grabbing a few scrap pieces and idly fiddling with them.

She sighs audibly; a tired – no, exhausted – sigh.

"…Our commander wanted to plunder the Pyramidion on Io for timeless information and weapons that would empower him to rise to Kell. Craaskkel's vacancy had still yet to be filled, and Dusk Barons across the system were posturing to finally take the position, but Baron Quelliks… He wanted to secure it. So, he gathered thee-hundred warriors to his cause – either by propagandizing or pressganging – and led them into the gate network."

She slid two pieces of the device together with a click.

"…It was a massacre."

--

Iylas breathed deep gulps of stale air as she ran. The dim light of her surroundings was barely a hindrance to her dark-attuned eyes, though it did nothing to calm her barely contained panic.

Beside her ran scores of her House, and though she spared no glances in their direction, she knew their expressions matched her own. Their eyes were as sharp as hers, and wary of any movement that wasn't explicitly Eliksni. If anything in these caverns moved, and it wasn't them, it was Vex.

A young male stumbled and fell, barely catching himself with his four arms as he did so. He was nimble enough to transition to running with all six limbs in a single fluid motion. Fear and panic compelled them all.

She called out to him. "Steady Zazaks, you mustn't fall behind!"

"I know!" Zazaks panted heavily and didn't need to be told twice.

Vex weren't exactly known for mercy.

He shouldered his rifle with one hand while the other three clawed across the carved stone beneath him. "Great Machine, damn Quelliks! This was a doomed venture from the start!"

His words, though blatantly insubordinate, were heartfelt, and given the circumstances, nobody had the mind to chastise him; Dusk Baron Quelliks had been foolish enough to follow in the footsteps of Skolas, inspired by the House of Wolves, so-called 'Kell of Kells', wishing to use Vex technology to swell the House of Dusk with legions of Eliksni torn from out of time, perhaps even reach back to eras before the Whirlwind.

It was a lofty goal, and it was what attracted those who were now her company. Most of those who now lay dead and trampled under the brass feet of Vex Minotaurs.

She had fought the Vex before, but always in isolated encounters carefully chosen in order to hone her craft as a Sacred Splicer, and none of them were enough to give her a frame of reference to understand just how terrifying the machines could be.

As she found out, it wasn't just the Vex you could see, but also those you couldn't see; those who hid in time and space and appeared where and when you wanted them least, firing at you with eyes that could see through time and aim exactly where you would be seconds or minutes or hours from now.

That any of them were still alive was a manufactured miracle in and of itself.

An echoing boom in the far distant maze behind them preceded the haunting groans of dying Vex as sprung traps triggered chains of explosions that only occasionally undermined the structural integrity of the winding corridors enough to crush encroaching Vex under heaps of rock and stone.

A bass-y warble emanated from the Servitor at her side, its tone full of unmistakable worry.

They were fifty in number now, roughly. Fifty out of six times that number who had entered the Pyramidian seeking knowledge and power in its labyrinthian passages.

Quelliks' hubris was their demise. Her only solace was that the bastard had died for his foolishly grand plan. It was relieving by degrees only, though, seeing as she and all the rest of their doomed cadre would soon be joining him whether they wanted to or not.

She heaved gulping breaths of air through her teeth, her leather cloak flapping behind her with the speed of her flight.

A lance of burning light sang by her head and slammed into the cranium of a comrade in front of her, melting his skull entirely.

She knew his face.

Rallin, Splicer. Two-year veteran of the House of Dusk, formerly of the House of Exile…

"Behind!"

As one, the rear guard turned and sprayed their weapons across the whole of the corridor, catching the enemy in its deadly swath, Shanks sacrificing themselves to physically block their pursuers when their weapons failed to do the job.

"Keep going! Run!"

Grenades were primed and tossed into the smoke and char, detonating behind them in cacophonous booms even as they dared not to pause to check for survivors.

"Iylas, we need a way out! Can you find one?"

She gritted her teeth painfully. She was the sole Sacred Splicer of the group, though they had begun the ill-fated expedition with three, and she alone was able was able both predict Vex movements as well as disrupt them. Her gift – nigh mythical – had never been tested against the time-splitters before the expedition, and it had been a crash course for her to learn to wield them with any effectiveness.

For all the good it was doing now…

Unlike the Cabal battlenet, or Human communication nodes, hacking Vex tech was like performing surgery in virtual reality, and her only tool of use was a fine scalpel. A fine scalpel with which she was woefully undertrained.

"Find a terminal for me to access," she demanded, forcing confidence into her voice when it felt like breaking. "I'll find a map for us."

Her request was barked down the line until at last, after several minutes, some of their many eyes spied a terminal that would suit her purpose. The party came to a stop, guns, blades, and grenades raised in defense as she practically ran into it with full force. Using her Splicer gauntlet, she hacked in, parsing the immediate, overwhelming cascade of Vex information for anything that might be of use to them.

She had to be quick.

"We don't have long. Seconds perhaps!" Zazaks warned in her ear, his eyes darting between herself and the tunnels stretching behind them.

She didn't need to be told.

It seemed the Vex were disinclined to allow her access to any sort of overarching map and were fighting diligently against her efforts to obtain one. But in the course of some digital wrestling, she was able to find a partial route that gave her a glimmer of hope.

Just a glimmer though.

She disengaged and waved them all forward. "I have something, this way!"

Behind them. Vex groans echoed in the darkness, and she swore she could see their crimson red oculars peeping at them from beyond.

"Ahead and to the third left! Go!" She urged them all onward as she fell back to the rear of the party, using her limited capabilities to throw off the impossibly accurate aim of the Vex behind them. But even so, the shots were coming too fast and too voluminous to cast them all aside.

Some searing bolts of stolen space-time inevitably found their marks, even past a barricade of shanks at their backs.

The sound of their floating machine entourage bursting like popped fuel canisters under the Vex's withering fire echoed over and over in her ear, the heat of their destruction felt clear through her cloak and to her rapidly dampening flesh.

The Vex Network pulsed with activity, and she could see their movements like a surge of twisting river water, their flood zeroing in on their position. The numbers she could perceive were… staggering.

A moment's choice. A moment of determination. She would stay behind. She would delay the Vex as long as she could, even if it was until nothing was left of her body but charred and trampled flesh. She was the only one who could disrupt the Vex's prediction algorithms.

"Iylas!" Zazaks cried desperately.

"Go! Go!" she cried in kind, pushing him onward.

"No, Iylas, don't!" came the voice of Krysis, one of her closest friends in the dwindling House of Dusk. "You must live more than us!"

But Iylas would have none of it. She roared at them as loud and forcefully as she could, the sound tearing from her throat with conviction and command, even as she continued to wave off the enemy's advance with terrified maneuvers. But for all her bravado the Vex were simply too many. Gliding Harpies, marching Goblins and their keen-eyed counterpart Hobgoblins, indomitable Minotaurs and-

Iylas' eyes went wide as a single eye, larger than the rest, burned red and bright amidst the throng, with great impenetrable walls of stolen chronostasis rising around it to ward off their feeble resistance; a veritable fortress and nexus through which the Collective processed their impossible calculations.

A Hydra.

Her heart dropped into her stomach.

She might have some success against the so-called 'small-fry' of the Vex… But a Hydra was far beyond her abilities; the sheer density of information it could process would overpower any of her attempts to disrupt it or its fellows.

A cry went up from the machine, as if challenging her to even try. Indeed, it was probably there because of her; the Vex had deemed her a threat and sent a suitable countermeasure to kill her.

She knew her limits. And apparently so did they.

She wouldn't survive. None of them would. Hope was dead, and this was the end…

A flashing BOOM! of searing light and thundering sound of splitting mountains sent her toppling to the floor as the ground jolted beneath her feet with catastrophic violence.

Everything was white. Too white.

But through the whiteness, she heard the Hydra roar again, only this time in an unfamiliar panic.

She had heard Vex make that sound only once before…

Her head was filled with a splitting pain, but she dared to raise her eyes and squint at the source of the brilliance that all but blinded her, even as it dimmed with the spreading rock dust pouring towards her, only to find their pursuers, once proud, stalwart, and bronze, scattered across the ground in clattering, black-slagged heaps.

In the midst of the sudden, unexpected carnage stood a single solitary figure. A monster of a thing; tall and imposing, fearless in form and function as a Minotaur broke in half beneath its fist. The Hydra slumped unceremoniously against the wall of the passage behind it, half of its bronze shell molten or missing, its broken carcass oozing radiolarian fluid across the stony floor, its various apparatus twitching away with infrequent death-spasms.

Ice flooded Iylas' veins.

This wasn't a Vex. It wasn't Cabal, and it certainly wasn't Hive – she would have preferred Hive.

A Guardian.

It had arrived only moments ago, seconds really, and already its indomitable, unsimulatable movements broke every Vex unit what was unfortunate to stand in its way, its rifle barking with powerful words of death. Void Light resonated around its fists, leaching life and power from its victims to fuel an overshield that warded off any errant bolt of misplaced searing space-time. It moved with surety, wasting no movements as it laid into the Vex with not a shred of hesitancy or vestige of fear. She could easily believe that for this monster, killing Vex was as second nature to it as breathing.

It wasn't until the last Vex was writhing in its grasp, that the lead in her limbs give way to the panic in her heart.

She screamed as loud as she could.

"Run! Now!"

If a Vex Hydra was a death sentence, then how much more was the Light-thief who slew it?

Her words broke their collective reverie, and the four-dozen remaining of the plundering Eliksni fled with renewed vigor and fear.

Yet her gaze lingered for a second.

With a clench of its fingers, the radiolaria containment unit of the Goblin in its hands it burst, draining like lifeblood from the machine that groaned, jerked, and twitched away what remained of its function, its weapon firing aimlessly at nothing until even that fell silent, dropping to the ground in an unceremonious clatter.

…Her gaze lingered for a second too long.

The Guardian's head turned, its hidden eyes finding her and the backs of her retreating kin.

It turned to face her.

She scrambled to her feet

It stepped forward.

She ran.

All it took was a second. One second of as much speed as she could muster and she could feel an eerie chill upon her back, like knives of ice stabbing through her fatless body. Her morbid curiosity too much to keep her from looking back.

It was.

Right.

Behind.

With speed beyond mortal comprehension, the carved stone crunched like glass beneath its heavy strides, the thumping of its steps tolling like a death knell in staccato at her heels.

Her mind frayed. Fear and panic took command of her flesh. She ran as fast as she could, but it was always right behind. Never faster. Never slower.

She was only just fast enough.

Using all six of her limbs, she aimed for the upcoming turn and lunged. She scraped and rolled across the floor as her inertia took over, and she tumbled painfully. In a moment of dilated time, she chanced to look up as she rolled.

Her body, dirt covered and filthy, was caught between the Titan's stride; had it but misstepped even slightly, she would have been crushed beneath its boots. The viridian visor of its helm seemed to track her perfectly.

By luck or fate, she avoided its bullish trample and she leapt into the side corridor.

She followed the winding way until it ended in a large atrium. Rather, it was a massive chamber with no discernable walls. A kaleidoscope of broken physics and torn space. In the center of the chamber was a triangular pit that dropped into nothingness, but the emitters at each corner revealed its purpose.

A gate.

The remains of her group were ahead, their gazes looking behind them, at her, alight with fear and hope in equal measure as she entered their vision.

She didn't slow as she stretched out her hand and accessed the Vex domain, triggering the activation sequence of the gate as quick as she could.

True to her will, it sprung to life with tessellated energy and fractal light, casting a blue-white light into the expanse above and below it.

"Into the gate!" she cried as she ran, and the uncertainty on her kin's faces was clear. She didn't blame them; they had no idea where – or just as pertinently, when – the gate would deposit them. Truth be told, neither did she. But it was the only gate in the immediate vicinity the Vex hadn't locked down, though they had managed to scramble its destination coordinates.

Their expressions changed all of a sudden, and she didn't need to guess why. The staccato of its footfalls thundered up through her legs and into her chest.

Between fates known and unknown, it seemed the fate unknown was the more preferable choice.

They turned as one and threw themselves into the portal.

Those that didn't immediately do so crushed their panic and turned their weapons on the approaching monster, for all the good it did. The Great Machine's Light hugged its body like a glove; it didn't so much as flinch – didn't slow even slightly – as it lowered its shoulders and accelerated.

She opened her mouth to tell them to run, but no words came out. No words, but a cry so instinctual, so primal, full of every measurable iota of terror mortality echoed in the emptiness, and that seemed to be enough.

In ones and twos and threes and fours, they cast themselves into gate's light, Shank after Servitor after Eliksni until she was the only one left.

The last to leap.

Her legs burned, her chest ached, her throat scratchy and dry. She pushed herself until she could feel her body break beneath her, passing over the edge of the chasm and then-

Then there was nothing beneath her.

She fell. Down and down into the calibrated space between spaces that was so meticulously folded over and again.

As she tumbled through uncontrollably, she felt a sense of relief wash over her. Salvation was just below, sizzling just at the tips of her fingers.

The corner of her vision was eclipsed by an open palm of the Light Thief's gauntleted hand reaching out to catch her skull, wreathed in lightning and bright enough to outshine even the gate's brilliant luminance.

But even as the microns of its glove and her flesh neared contact, the gate took her into its pulsing white embrace and tore her apart, her vision shattering into pixelated distortion as the Vex machination fulfilled its purpose, carrying her on its current away and into the unknown.

As the image of the Guardian twisted and broke, she could almost swear she heard it cry out to her. It was a word; a single, distorted human word.

'Wait.'

She didn't have time to think on it as the current took hold of her and dragged her down into the depths of cosmic chasms and temporal tunnels.

Where she was fell away.

Where she was going… By the Great Machine, she couldn't guess.

She plunged into the unknown.

--

Iylas closed her eyes at the memory of that fateful day. The day so many died for so little, and were cast adrift through time and space.

She opened her eyes again, looking down at the half-finished receptor in her hands.

"Most of us came out of the gate together. Some, however…" She remembered feeling fear that the Guardian might have followed in after them, then relief that the portal behind them was dark, then sorrow as she counted the heads of those who were present.

Nearly fifty had jumped into the gate. Thirty-seven were all that remained.

She was grateful to learn all of the Servitors had made the journey – four holy machines in total. But only six shanks had managed to survive the transit. She tried to remember how many there had been after they all but threw them between themselves and the Vex, but… She couldn't remember. She was sure, however, there had been more than six.

"We tried looking for them. But there was only one gate we could find, and I could not force it open again. It was a dead gate."

The term "dead-gate" was used by many factions to denote a gate that could not be activated without express permission from the highest authorities withing the Vex network. In other words, functionally dead. They could be activated temporarily and used as egress points; however it was never obvious if a gate was dead or not until after it was used, leading to many incidents where intruders in the Vex network wound up stranded in time and space after coming out of a gate that couldn't be turned on again.

She let the device in her hands tumble to the desk, which she felt compelled to lean against with all four arms. "Quelliks gathered many capable warriors, but most of us were untested. He didn't need us for our skills. He needed us to bleed for him. Those who remained…"

She turned and looked at the human who was standing in the center of her room. He was tall, imposing, garbed in armor strong enough to block bullets, plasma, blades, and who-knows-what-else. But his face was soft… His flesh, yes, of course; that was a given with humans. But his expression… It was…

It was gentle. Understanding. Empathetic.

He was looking at her with eyes that understood her tribulations. After all, was not he a Guardian well-acquainted with Vex network navigation? Had he not jumped from present to past to future and back again to destroy the Vex mind Atheon? Not many knew it, but yes, he had.

Her head ached at the memory of her first moments in the bowels of this underground hell, and she raised a three fingered hand to massage her forehead.

"None of the veteran warriors survived, and as the last sacred splicer, I was voted as commanding officer. Captain. Though… we don't have enough ether to spare."

The heavy sounds of his booted feet echoed in the room as he approached her. "I see. So that is why they defer to you. I was surprised at first, but now I understand why."

She huffed sardonically. "Because I was lucky to be born an aberration. They follow because they are scared. Frightened like little mice who want so desperately for someone else – anyone else – to shoulder the responsibility of leadership."

"They follow because the only one who can bear that responsibility is you, Iylas." Lazarus looked down on her with one of his strange, human smiles, though this one was mellowed by the honesty in his words. "And I have no reason to believe that you haven't done your absolute best to do so."

"Of course," she agreed as a matter of fact, her nose rising into the air proudly and with a huff. Just because she was chosen for her sacred slicer abilities didn't mean she wasn't also the most optimal candidate. "I would run the risk of disappointing a certain someone if I did not put my all into the task."

She cracked an eye open to peer at the human, her gaze lingering on the strange expression on his face. It was one she had tried for a long time to decipher. It was a mix between annoyance and amusement; a wry look that drew a side-long look and a smile on his face.

She liked that look. She liked that look a lot.

"And here I was wondering where that ego of yours had gone," he said, a hand sliding to a rest on his hip. "So good to see you haven't lost all your pride."

She snorted and felt her maw lighten with a smile as well. "Indeed. I'd almost forgotten it. Thank you for the reminder; you always have brought out the best in me."

That caused him to laugh. Not full-heartedly; it was more akin to a hum interrupted by a rhythmic breath from his chest. "I suppose I have."

A silence filled the room after that. Not an awkward silence as so many times such a quietude might be considered, but a weighty silence. A gravity. A somberness.

He was silent for many seconds before he spoke again. "How long have you been down here?"

Iylas opened her mouth to answer, only to realize she didn't rightly know the answer. Frowning, she turned and walked over to a small computer pad which lay on the dusty ground beside her bed. Tapping it several times, she counted the days on the displayed calendar.

"…Ninety-five days, making that…" She counted the division on her fingers. "Almost 14 weeks." The words fell out of her mouth as if her jaw had gone numb. Great Machine… had it really been that long?

Iylas was no stranger to dark caverns or tunnels, but to spend so much time in a maze of them without a hint of sunlight while scrambling to scrape together a shelter, food, and also coordinate scouts to find a way out all while keeping to the shadows of a realm filled with vicious little creatures who would undoubtedly eat them… All of the days and nights blended together in a gradient of activity.

She swayed, a dizzying fatigue suddenly falling over her body. The world seemed to spin around her, and her limbs felt as if they would buckle under her own bodyweight. In fact, they did.

But she did not hit the ground; a pair of strong hands caught her, one fleshy arm (though armored) wrapping around her chest while the other hooked itself under her lowest armpit in support.

"Whoa! Easy there…! Hold on, let's sit you down," Lazarus spoke with understandable concern in his voice. He reached out, pulling a chair across the floor with the toe of his boot and settled her into it gingerly. "That's… a long time. You must have worked very hard."

It was a simple statement. You worked hard. Simple and obvious. But something about it made Iylas feel… warm… Proud. Rallying her strength, she steadied herself as she caught her breath, which seemed suddenly and startlingly short. She didn't know exactly how to respond to that, so she said the first thing that came to her mind, a playful smirk. "Of… Of course I… have… All work worth doing is hard… is it not?"

An ironic humor pulls a hiss from her throat as she fixed the human with a knowing look, remembering the first time he had spoken those very same words to her so long ago on Earth's sole, pale satellite…

His eyes returned the knowing look, and she knew he remembered immediately without even needing to say so. Indeed, he echoed her chortle with his own and nodded his head. "Haha… Wise words, Miss Iylas. Very wise indeed."

She resummoned her legs to hold her up, but they wouldn't move… Well, wouldn't move fast enough for her liking; it seemed to her that her limbs now remembered just how tired they really were.

Her struggle did not go unnoticed as Lazarus looked her over with his eyes; those keen eyes that missed nothing.

He kneeled before her, looking her limbs up and down, searching for some sort of… something. His mind wasn't like that of an Eliksni's, nor even like an ordinary human's. As a Guardian of the Warlock order, his mind occupied realms of thought beyond ordinary comprehension; his thoughts were thoroughly unreadable, and she was certain any other Eliksni would shrink under his piercing observations.

But not her. After all, she was perhaps the only Eliksni who was capable of reading his face.

"Ha… A pity I did not cleanse myself… if you mean to look at me so…" she said, her tone lowering to whisper.

His eyes broke from whatever unknowable thing he'd been contemplating and fixed her with another wry grin, answering her subtle suggestive remark by not answering at all.

Tugging off a plated glove, he reached out, wrapping that strong, calloused hand around her shin firmly, squeezing with prodding motions as he worked his way up her calf, feeling between her plates for the muscle that she knew ought to have been there, but wasn't.

Iylas steadied herself as he did so; if any other creature on this Earth – on any Earth – in any universe – so much as tried to imitate him in this moment, they would have lost the hand with a single silvery slash of her shockblade.

Far from a privilege he'd ever taken advantage of, she relished the rare sensation of his raw skin running along her own leathery flesh. Not that she would show it.

Pride and all…

"Hsss, how bold you've grown, Lazarus," she hissed, drawing out his name syllable by syllable. "Perhaps too bold…?"

"Oh hush," he said simply, ignoring her taunt as he rose to his feet and dusted his hands. "Your muscles are atrophied. You need to consume more ether… More anything."

She grunted as she leaned forward, running her claws along the same patch of flesh his had just left, knowing full well her muscles weren't what they used to be. "There is none to spare," she admitted with a whisper even lower than before. "Four Servitors would normally be plenty for our number, except that there is no material in this under-realm to convert. And what… meat we find is equally thin and malnourished."

"Do you take your share?" he asked pointedly, fixing her with a suspicious look that made her scoff at him in return.

"An equal share only," she reiterated, reminding him that even if she was of the Captain rank in practice, she wasn't one to take what couldn't be afforded to share. "And… there are others who are hungrier than me."

She looked up at him sternly, as if daring him to reproach her for her generosity. She knew he wanted to; it was written on his face. He could probably make a good point of it too. "A leader must make sure they are always fit to lead," he might say. "Or else they might be left leaderless when you drop dead from hunger," or something.

However, she knew his better altruistic nature wouldn't let him do that. She knew she had made the right choice to share what she could with those who had less.

Lazarus inhaled a lungful of dusty hair and sighed deeply… If she pegged it right, it was a sigh of resignation. It was as much an admission that he knew it too.

Holding out his hand, a flicker of light manifested in his palm, and her eyes fixated on it instantly. Though the emblem had long since been erased, she knew its shape instantly. "Is that a-? Why do you have that…?"

Flicking his thumb over the canister's lid, he took an aggressive step forward and shoved the device up to her mouth. "Don't ask stupid questions and drink."

Instantly the thick, wafting scent of powerful, delicious ether wafted up into her nose and drifted over her tongue tantalizingly.

She almost choked on the smell it was so good. She could tell it was more potent than anything she'd had in… Years? Yes, surely years. 'O Great Machine, give me strength…!'

Wrenching her face away with all of her might, she pushed the canister away from her lips, resisting every instinct of her body to obey his direct order and ravenously consume the whole device's contents.

"N-No!" She defied, not daring to turn her head back to him until the device was at least a full arm's-length away from her mouth. "I… Th-Thank you, but… I…"

The sudden appearance of such a wonderful gift nearly broke her spirit. Her refusal all the more so.

"I cannot take what others cannot share. Not like this. Not when our condition is so… dire."

"I admire your altruism, Iylas, but sometimes you have to think about yourself first and foremost. A leader must make sure-"

"-They are always fit to lead." She laughed as she finished his thought with a sarcastic laugh. It seemed her suspicions had been right on the mark. "Well, in case your eyes are deficient, I am still living, am I not?"

Lazarus' flat look told her he was hardly convinced. "I think our definitions of 'living' may differ just slightly."

To which she felt a deep compulsion to return his expression as best her Eliksni face could imitate. "I do not want to hear that from an undead ghoul, Guardian."

He snorted at her. "I think there is an argument to be made regarding the distinction between being 'alive' and being 'not dead'."

She sighed, exhausted by their impasse. Arguing with him was impossible. Mostly because he was right; right in an easily justifiable way. But so was she. Both were right, and neither were wrong. Who then could claim the argumentative high ground?

It was always like this with him. Though she'd not always managed to match him wit for wit, she'd certainly learned to use his own tactics against him. The result? He could not reproach her.

Nevertheless, she didn't dislike it.

"If you have supplies to spare, please, pass them along to the Servitors. I will eat only after all the others have had their meals. Though… you have already said you have little…"

The hand of Lazarus' that held the offered canister drew back reluctantly, his expression betraying his realization of her stubbornness. But rather than a frown, a smile slowly graced his soft face, his lips pulling back to reveal his flat omnivorous teeth. "How often is it that I meet someone with a will as indominable as my own?"

Breathing out a decompressing breath, Iylas once again rose to her feet, a moment's rest giving her enough strength to once again rise to her full height. "Only I, Lazarus. Only I. Well, myself and…"

She trailed off, realizing that there was one other who could match Lazarus' willful spirit. The fact that she did not see him gave cause for concern…

"Where… Where is your…?" she asked after a moment, an icy fear spreading in her heart, her eyes flicking back and forth between the empty air on either side of Lazarus' shoulders that his Ghost customarily occupied. He was never one to hide himself in her presence… So why would he be absent if he wasn't… if maybe…

"I'm here, Miss Iylas."

Her fears were abolished with a flicker of flowing light as the polygonal shape of that familiar matte black shell materialized at Lazarus' side, his synthesized voice imitating the Eliksni language with admirable accuracy.

She let her concern out of her body with a single breath. "Ah, for a moment I worried you might have been… Well, I suppose it wouldn't have made sense if you were."

After all, hadn't Lazarus dazzled them all to a standstill with his Light? Light that he couldn't have had if Gabriel truly was no longer with him.

'No, actually, he stunned us all with gun shots,' she correctly recalled, her eyes glancing to where the iron distributor of said gun shots was tucked into Lazarus' waistband beneath his robes.

"Sorry, it's a safety thing. It's not that I don't trust you, but there's a lot of guys out there I don't know."

His fins drooped apologetically, but she quickly reassured him with a placating wave. "No, it was the correct choice. It is always best for you to remain unseen... For Lazarus' sake if not your own."

Comforted, his fins returned to their upright position, and he swooped over to spin around her, examining her with his pale-white cyclopean eye that cast scanning waves of measurement across her body.

"Hmm," he hummed quietly, tilting his fins to the side as if cocking his head. "Lazarus is right, you've lost body mass. Eight-point-two kilograms in fact. That's… that's a lot of muscle, Miss Iylas."

She waved him off, knowing well enough how much muscle that was; she felt it every time she climbed up, down, and across the great chasms and walls that comprised this hellish underground kingdom. "I am aware, little light. I'm… aware."

But Gabriel, Traveler bless him, wasn't about to let her go. "No, I mean… twenty pounds of muscle loss is bad enough in a human. But Eliksni bodies are naturally leaner, so that means-"

"I know!" she said firmly, almost yelling. Her voice silenced his, and she quickly schooled herself as she lowered her voice back to conversational "I know. Perhaps it is worse for me thanks to my… generosity… It is nearly as bad for all the others as well."

She sighed, as she let her head lean back, her hair brushing lower against her back as she did so. It was a critical sort of situation. It wasn't exactly a secret, but it was something no one spoke about; they all knew. If they didn't find a way to gather food soon, they would starve. And if they couldn't find a way to boost ether production, they would waste away even with food. Some had suggested making moves against the nasty denizens of the deeper tunnels, luring them or raiding them and taking what they needed to survive, even if it was their very meat. They had done so before on a small scale, but Iylas had been reticent to upscale such operations for fear of attracting attention. For all their advantages in technology and biology, they were still only a total of thirty-three Eliksni against hundreds… perhaps thousands of Thrall-like creatures.

If even a single one of her companions was lost in the attempt, she would carry that weight with her forever… and she had already lost four in the time since they arrived. Lost to slips, starvation, stabbings, and the silence of the labyrinth.

She would never be able to justify losing so many for so pitiful a purpose.

Not like Quelliks.

"But, all is well now," She heard herself say aloud, though she didn't intend to do so. Nevertheless, it felt… good… to say. "All is well."

She lowered her gaze from the ceiling to the human before her, looking into his two eyes with all four of hers. "…It is well now, yes?"

Even after saying so, she asked. She could not imagine that he – that Lazarus – would abandon them… abandon her. But neither could she account for the long stretch of time between now and the last time they spoke. How long had it been? A few years at least. And much had happened between human and Eliksni-kind. She could be forgiven for harboring some doubts…

But Lazarus nodded to her, a surety in the muscles of his neck, a harsh determination in the structure of his face. "On the condition of kinship, I will lead you and yours out of this place, back into the light of the Sun."

On the condition of kinship. It was a phrase uttered in antiquity; an old phrase of Eliksni society. She couldn't help but laugh. How very like Lazarus to pull such a thing from the pages of a history book.

"Then, as Iylas, Captain of my remnant, I offer my sincerest thanks to you, Lazarus," she said at last, bowing with great respect to the man whose stature seemed to tower over her. "And as Iylas, Eliksni whose life you once again hold in your hands, I say…"

She placed a hand over her heart with an uncharacteristic gentleness that she summoned with deliberate force from the dark, untended corners of her soul.

"My heart overflows with joy. I am… happy to have found you again."

Her words seemed to catch Lazarus off guard. She doubted he was surprised to hear the words themselves, so mayhap he was surprised she felt the need to say so in the first place… She didn't know. However, his expression slowly softened and he smiled, stepping forward and grasping the back of her skull and pulling it forward to press her forehead against the bridge of his, her white mane suddenly tangled between his fingers as she felt the exhalation of his lungs against her face. Smelt his breath in her nose; his almost-forgotten scent…

"However suspicious the circumstances of this reunion, I am glad for them nonetheless. Words… cannot express my relief that you are safe, Iylas."

A warmth bloomed in her heart, banishing the cold of the under-dark mountain void from her limbs, and she closed her eyes as she leaned her head into him, feeling the radiating heat of his body, close as they were. It was a moment of affection – a moment of closeness. When was the last time she felt this? When was the last time she had even allowed another being to touch her, let alone this human…?

Her answer; long enough to have almost forgotten about it... Almost.

Her toothy maw opened in a silent sigh as she relished the unlooked-for comfort of his five-fingered hand on her scalp – of the brush of bare flesh upon flesh.

She didn't know for how long they remained like that… Long enough, she supposed, for her to lose herself in that long, fleeting moment, for when at last she felt his brow separate from hers, she felt as if it had been all too short.

"I should return to my group. They'll doubtless be nervous surrounded by slavering Eliksni, especially when most creatures in this world who look like you do actively want to kill people like them."

"A-Ah, yes… I can see how that would be a problem." Iylas blinked and scratched at her chin just below the two large teeth centered on her lower jaw. "Perhaps when the waking-hour comes we can explain things to our parties. Properly, that is."

Lazarus nodded with a smile. A knowing smile. "Yes, I think that would be best. It will give me extra time to explain to them that you and yours will be joining us… Extra time I fear I will desperately need. And also it will give them a chance to rest; you did interrupt our sleep after all."

Although not an expression she would often allow others to see, she had the decency to show a degree of sheepishness at the whole… What should she call it? Misunderstanding.

Nevertheless, she didn't let it show for long. "Well then, all the more reason for you to rest now then, while you are all safe in our keeping."

Her coy tone adjoined a knowing smirk. But Lazarus knew her well enough not to fall for her over-feigned confidence. He looked at her pointedly and shook his head, ducking under the sheet that separated the inside of the room from the central chamber.

"Goodnight, Captain Iylas."

And he was gone. Gone so fast she didn't even have time to reciprocate his farewell. Iylas smiled in spite of it; he always was one to try and have the last word. To end an encounter on his terms.

Even so, in the dim electrical hum of the room, her mouth split open to speak in its solitude.

"Goodnight, my beloved Lazarus… Goodnight."

A flickering moment of melancholy hung over her before she waved it away with a pair of claws that rubbed at her suddenly very sleepy eyes.

There was a time and a place for everything. And this was neither the time nor the place for either her or he to express their feelings honestly.

That could come later.

For now, she felt satisfied enough knowing that when she closed her eyes, her beloved Guardian would be only a claw's length away; she felt satisfied knowing that everything would be okay now.

Once again, Lazarus would be her savior.

Last edited: Aug 13, 2024

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Black Lister

Aug 16, 2023

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Threadmarks Chapter 15: To the Moon and Back

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Black Lister

Aug 8, 2024

#424

I duck my head under the sigil-bearing tarp, brushing it aside with my forearm as I reenter the starker white light of the main room. Almost immediately scores of eyes are upon me, all blue and luminant. I take a pregnant moment to scan the crowd, acknowledging their collective gazes with a dismissive expression… though in fact my eyes are keen to their people's subtleties. When I move at last, the crowd parts with careful steps, their arms swinging out to push their fellows back as I stride through them unhindered. In most of their eyes I recognize the familiar healthy fear of Guardian-kind, but in others, I see only a wary curiosity that belied a naturally circumstantial ignorance.

Clearly, some have dealt with Guardians before. The fact that they are still alive after having done so indicates they were either lucky to be left alive or had somehow managed to win. Either way, even as their enemy, I have to respect their means… or their luck.

As the crowd parts, one Eliksni is left in my path; the one male who stood beside and translated for Iylas before. I have a sneaking suspicion he may be their second-in-command.

As the absence of his fellows singles him out, he gives a short bow, curling his back in an awkward genuflection, his arms spread out not unlike like chicken wings.

"Guardian," he acknowledges quietly in good English. "Have you and our Captain reached an agreement?"

I pause my steps and regard him with a pointed examination up and down. "We have."

As far as Eliksni went, there is nothing especially unusual about him; all of the Eliksni gathered were substantially worse for wear, so to say that he was filthy, emaciated, and clearly running on fumes would be a substantial understatement, not to mention redundant. However, there are at least one or two traits that set him apart from his kin. A single scar runs down the left side of his face through the two dim, dead eyes the wound had destroyed, extending downward from the bottom of his chin. Though it seems his collarbone hadn't been damaged in the attack that took half his sight, it had obviously impacted against his cuirass; a faint mesh of spiderwebbing cracks still remain from where a sharp blade had once crushed the alien material, though the care that had been applied in its repair is notable. It reminds me of the art of kintsugi of the people of Old Japan, though instead of gold, it appeared to be an all-purpose material filler. Far less artistic, though nonetheless evocative.

On his left hip hangs a pair of blades, one holstered just above the other, and on his right arm is slung a wire rifle.

Although he approaches with a notable degree of authority, I would be blind not to notice the distinct wariness with which he regards me. Close, but not too close to retreat. Tall, but not too tall to lose his balance if struck. Bold, but not foolish. I eye him for a long moment, observing these things before I respond. Though, I do not yet elaborate.

Instead I pry in return. "What are you called?"

He does not offer an ireliis salute, but he does bow his head lower than might otherwise be expected. "Zazaks is my name. I am second in command of our… detachment. Captain Iylas has declared you our guests, so I will greet you appropriately; welcome, Guardian Lazarus. Your reputation precedes you."

I return the gesture, though with a bow shallower than his. "Your hospitality is appreciated. And your Common, if I may praise, is very good."

I note the fluency with which he pronounces my name, a fluency even Iylas does not display, though I don't know how much of that is intentional or habitual…

Zazaks cocks his head affirmably. "Most of my generation and younger are equally fluent."

This is a fact I know, for even Eliksni like Spider showed a fluency for slang and idioms that others of his kind do not… though I cannot gauge with any degree of accuracy the fat Fallen's age. It does, however, beg the question of how much airs Zazaks is putting on. Is his measured speech merely the limitation of his fluency, or is it by intent?

"Indeed," I agree simply. "But it bears complimenting nonetheless. You… say that you are young… But I might have expected you to be older, given your wounds." I trace a line over my left eye, mirroring his scared wound.

He raises his hand rising to touch the discolored skin of his face, hissing with dry humor. "Yesss. It is… a lesson I carry with great humility."

Ah, likely earned in a challenge he was ill-prepared to win. Lesson learned, I suppose.

"However, my shooting eyes," he continues, tapping the temple next to the two good glowing sapphires in his right eye sockets, "are all the keener for it."

"As you say." I give him an approving twerk of my mouth and a nod. He certainly carries himself with confidence, if not overly so. The truly capable may brag as much as the overconfident, but the manner in which they carry themselves is entirely distinct. This one… he is quite capable.

"Tell me, Zazaks… why do you ask me, a stranger? If you truly have your Captain's ear, then it's her you should ask."

"It is because I 'have her ear' that I do not trouble her," he replies without pause, a faint lilt in his tone. "I would much rather trouble you."

"And you think that's wise?" I counter, matching his tone with mine. "Half your kin give me a wide berth, and half look foolish enough to try their hand."

Zazaks' eyes flicked to his compatriots, noting that what I say is very much true. His shoulders roll in a very human shrug. "I am neither fearful, nor foolish. Your kind are difficult to kill. But only difficult. Not impossible. There are methods to fight Guardians, and none of those ways involve approaching as I have approached you."

There is a pervasive steadiness to both his posture and his tone… He may be young, but I can see he's clearly seen his fair share of trials… and come through them all more callous for it the for it. If I were to measure this Eliksni, I would consider him a respectable sort… though time will tell if Iylas chose her second in command well or not.

Actually, did she choose him? Perhaps he was simply the next rank below her when she rose to command… Well, she wouldn't keep him in his position if she didn't trust him, so… maybe I'm worrying over nothing.

I give the faded-indigo-skinned alien another look up and down, nodding my head in acceptance and explain the jist of my and Iylas' agreement. For his part, I half-expected him to already anticipate what my and Iylas' discussion had been about, but the subtle micro-expressions of his face betray a clear surprise.

Zazak's two eyes widen imperceptibly before narrowing again listening to my every word perceptively. "You… know the way out?"

I nod. "We do."

I give a subtle emphasis on the 'we', intending to indicate the union of myself and the rest of the Fellowship. I know Fallen respect the danger a Guardian poses, but not necessarily so a mortal. At the very least, I can use my reputation as an umbrella to shield the others from any exploitative opportunists; I'm not just a Guardian unto myself.

I can't tell if the message gets across as clear as I hope, but Zazaks' gaze flits over to where the Fellowship is standing uncomfortably amid a throng of alien creatures before returning to me.

"Then I will follow Captain Iylas' orders."

Approvingly, I give him a nod before jutting my chin to where his kin meander in the artificially illuminated space. "And them?"

Zazaks turns to those I indicate with a passing glance. "And them," he confirms simply. "So far, we have survived by the rule of command. We will not break ranks now. If any do, then…" he trailed off, as if thinking of an assurance that would put such a one as myself at ease. "…Then they are free to wander these tunnels alone."

In other words, those who do not follow Iylas' lead will be cast out. Strangely, I expected a more heavy-handed approach to insubordination, but… perhaps following a Guardian isn't something Iylas would feel comfortable ordering so much as offering. Rather, she would present the opportunity as a choice, rather than an obligation.

Yeah, that definitely seems more like her way.

I purse my lips with a pointed pensiveness before giving an exaggerated nod, reaching out and clapping my gauntleted hand over Zazaks' shoulder, my grip firm as iron. "It is good to know Captain Iylas has such trustworthy subordinates supporting her."

Zazaks fixes me with a look that speaks to his uncertainty. That I should praise him at all is a queer thing in and of itself, but to concern myself with Iylas' wellbeing is all the stranger. No doubt he is wondering what my gesture means exactly, how he should interpret it, and how he should respond.

It is several seconds before he makes his decision, resolving his unsurety with a simple nod – more of a short bow than otherwise – and takes a step back. "You may sleep in the fifth chamber down the hall. I… will leave you to your rest then, Guardian Lazarus."

And with a rearward shuffle, he turns and makes his way into the crowd, waving his arms and barking commands to disperse, ordering the rapid dismantlement of everything that wasn't permanently nailed down. A surge of energy erupted from the throng as excited and confused cries echoed in the mountain-hewn space. Where uncertain alien faces stared at us, now shining eyes dart back and forth, bodies shuffling and shifting around each other as tasks were assigned loudly and set to by their supervisors.

It really is impressive to watch. Anyone with a lack of experience traveling with nomadic caravans would find it bewildering to witness. But I can see the purpose in the chaos, the patterns of disassembly and storage amidst a cacophony of howls and barks, and the clacking of claws and jaws. Supply crates suspended in nets along the walls and ceiling are brought down, opened and equipment swiftly and meticulously stuffed into them in a rapid, but organized fashion.

More Eliksni emerge from other passageways down the hall, alert, but clearly freshly woken. Shanks come with them, myriad tools affixed to as many manipulators and set about taking apart equipment and infrastructure too tall to reach from the ground or too large to handle while clinging to the walls or ceiling.

The room has become a veritable beehive of activity in mere minutes, and I'm left to wonder if they won't in fact be ready to leave before we've had a proper rest.

However, that's ultimately not my concern as I return to the expectant – if understandably bewildered – huddle of the Fellowship.

--

Boromir's molars ground against each other near to cracking as he watched with naked wariness as the throng of foul, gangly-limbed, claw-toed creatures lurked about with hunched postures… like hungry beasts hunting their prey. The leather of his gloved hand groaned as his fingers clenched around the grip of his sword, ready to draw and strike at a moment's notice, his shield poised between himself and the nearest thing that wasn't elf, man, or dwarf.

He hated every waiting moment they stood there, party surrounded by fiends who just a short while before had been snapping their slavering jaws at them, knives and claws slashing and clutching for a morsel of their flesh.

One passed by, almost within striking distance. The Gondorian grimaced and braced his shield pointedly. He hated those glowing eyes of theirs; the eerie veil of sky-blue light that shrouded the direction of their gaze…

Excitement still surged through his body since the attack that woke them. The sound of steel clashing against steel still rang in his ears. …Or was that the ringing of the thunderstrikes that flashed from Lazarus' magic fetish? He resisted the urge to scrape at the inside of an ear for the invisible bell that still intoned within.

The fact that the wizard in question was able to put a stop to the attack with words alone was a miracle in and of itself, but that the man seemed to know their barking, guttural speech at all was a boon beyond expectation. And even more surprising was the sudden wariness the creatures adopted the very moment he opened his mouth to speak to them; the aggression with which they had thrown themselves at the ten companions evaporated in an eerie instant.

Orcs, for all their evil, were creatures the same as any other, and Boromir was as observant of their habits and methods as any veteran soldier in the service of Gondor. Moreso even. And though he didn't know these creatures half as well as he knew orcs, he would be a fool indeed to mistake the anxious fear that filled their frozen alien faces as Lazarus' voice touched their ears.

Now, the fear he had seen before had left them, replaced by duty, and they were animated; leathery feet shifting and scuttling about like so many man-sized insects, jaws lined with rows of needle-knife teeth. Many still cast glances towards them even now, though if they paused at all in their work, they were quickly reprimanded by others who pushed them along.

Many spared furtive glances their way, but few dared to let them linger overlong; whether it be for the cause of duty or a fear of consequence, Boromir couldn't discern… but he had an idea.

Lazarus.

The moment he opened his mouth, the creatures - "Eliksni" he called them – were wary of him. If he were to make a comparison, it was as if wise, well-regarded Gandalf had spoken in rebuke amidst a crowd. The respect Boromir knew he would give to the wizard was the same as the fear the Eliksni gave to Lazarus.

Just what was he to them? Boromir wanted to know, and he was sure he wasn't the only one.

The devil in question was out of sight for several minutes before he emerged again from the behind the sigil-strewn tarp that separated the room into which he had disappeared. And when he had, he was waylaid by one of the Eliksni, one who Boromir faintly recalled had stood beside the pale-skinned one with whom Lazarus seemed unexpectedly familiar.

Lazarus spoke with it as well, a guarded expressed masking his face, even when he reached out to clasp the creature's shoulder in a display the man would risk calling appreciative, and he didn't drop it even when he and the creature bowed their heads to each other and separated, the thing to the throng, and Lazarus to the Fellowship.

However, Lazarus' expression brightened as he approached, adopting a lighter mood that Boromir suspected was meant to put the party at ease. And while it may not have done so effectively for the tall folk among them, it did seem to work someway on the hobbits, for whom it was their benefit.

"I presume negotiations have proceeded apace?" Gandalf said as Lazarus drew near in a tone brighter than the occasion called for, though his wizened hand still gripped firmly onto the hilt of Glamdring at his waist.

"They have," the younger replied simply, gesturing over the heads of the crowd to a length of dark hallway beyond. "Lodging has been provided for us. This way."

As Lazarus turned to lead the fore, those who had been staring and those who had been pretending not to stare quickly made way, as if suddenly made aware of a boiling surge of water passing at their feet. The Fellowship followed neatly in that wake, the space they left behind filled as soon as Legolas, last in line, passed them by.

They were led to a room that, like before, was covered only with meager cloth drape. Lazarus poked his head in, glancing about before holding the fabric aside to welcome them in. The room itself was mostly spartan, bore similar accoutrements and iconography to what had been in the main chamber, with curved furniture that captured their attention with blinking red, blue, and golden light, all framed by familiar stone walls that matched the rest of what they'd seen of the great undercity of Moria.

The room was warmer than he had expected it to be.

Once again, the Fellowship let their bags fall from their shoulders, the Hobbits first to forsake their burdens as they collapsed to the ground, save for Pippin who, along with Gimli, had taken to inspecting the luminate devices.

"I shall take first watch."

The silence punctuated by exhausted groans was broken by Legolas, whose piercing eyes passed between Aragorn and Gandalf, as if prompting a grievance from either. His proposal went unopposed, though none were left sufficiently assured regardless, least of all Gimli, whose Dwarvish agitation left him unable to sit still in this most bizarre of circumstances.

"It is well enough that you watch those who may find rest, master elf, but I will find none, for questions drum upon my mind as hammer upon stone! An answer! An answer, I pray! Master Lazarus, can you not comfort a troubled spirit with reason? For in its absence, I am left bewildered!"

"I too would like to know," Frodo chimed in agreement. "And not only myself, or for Gimli, but for us all. I think we are in dire want of an explanation."

For once Boromir was thankful the questions weren't only the property of his own mind but were clearly shared among everyone in relatively equal measure. Ordinarily, he would be the first to raise an objection to anything that felt particularly odd or out of place.

Lazarus' eyes examined them all, as if perhaps gauging their overall interest and deliberating if it was a want worth satiating. After a few long seconds, he ran a gloved hand through his hair, brushing his brown bangs up his scalp out of his face, then let out a prolonged decompressing breath. "…Yes. Yes, Mr. Baggins, I do think you're right… Very well."

With a slight slump in his gait, Lazarus made his way to one side of the room and sat upon one of the semi-spherical structures, leaning forward and summoning the Fellowship to gather around with a beckoning wave. "As I have said before, these Eliksni are, as I am, wayward souls left to wander blindly in the world. While my own circumstances are wholly unknown to me even myself – the whyfors of my arrival to these lands – I can explain, albeit poorly, the cause of their presence."

He tilted his head back, his whole body heaving with a breath that steadied him. His eyes stared up at the ceiling, though it seemed to many that he was looking at something else entirely; something beyond the sight of the physical world.

"My home is beset on every side by one foe or another. Some are desperate scavengers just like the ones outside, and some are imperialist conquerors. Some are religious exterminators who seek nought but death, and some are overwhelming gestalt apathy what cares only for its own unknowable ends."

He raised a finger for each item listed, raising his hand with four fingers stretched out. "That 'gestalt apathy' is of a nature I cannot rightly clarify to any of you… leastwise not in any good time. However, it possesses a means of transporting a thing across vast distances; to bridge a gap too far."

He turned to the hobbits, gesturing first to them and then to the rest of the party. "Imagine if the door of your house could be opened unto the verandas of Rivendell, or from Rivendell to the White Tower of Gondor. Imagine if the gate of Erebor could open to the depths of this kingdom of Moria. Or if the Black Gates of Mordor could swing wide to the unprotected territories beyond the reach of any relief. It is in its nature to do so at will."

He allowed a moment's pause for his audience to consider his words.

Boromir felt a cold creep over his forearms, which were otherwise more than warm beneath his bracers. If the Enemy had such a method of moving troops and material at his disposal, Gondor… No… the whole free world would have fallen long ago! To allow an army to attack from within an enemy's territory would spell inevitable doom. What strategy could be devised to defend against such a means?

"Though, on occasion, the means by which they do this – with some skill – can be appropriated. In this case, these Eliksni used just such a trick to escape certain death, only to be deposited somewhere in the deeper depths of this kingdom. And then without a means to open that 'door' again; stranded."

Lazarus spread his arms wide with a sort of shrug. "I have not been informed beyond that. But I can surmise that they have been here for some time, and I as one familiar with them can see in their eyes the desperation of their circumstances."

"Are they perilous?" asked Merry. It was obvious he wanted to ask more about the things Lazarus was less than forthwith in explaining, but wisely asked the correct question first. .

"Innately so," Lazarus replied. "They were once patrons of my people's benefactor, the Traveler. But it abandoned them in their hour of greatest need, forsaking them for us instead. hose who endured the ruin of their homeland followed the Traveler's path, and came to my home. The journey was long, hard, and much of their culture changed in their flight. The nobility which they once bore themselves so valiantly was gone and has not been seen in their kind since save a seldom precious few. In its place, viciousness, violence, betrayal, and cruelty remain. Add to that, they and my folk have been at war for centuries; evil has been dealt to and fro between us for longer than most of you have been alive, and our enmity has not waned much."

"Yet it begs the question, and rightly so, why you have chosen to place your trust in them," Boromir remarked. "I pledged to you my trust in confidence, and I shall not renege on that promise; the Men of Gondor uphold their oaths. However, I, for my part, yearn for a fuller elucidation. As, I daresay, do we all."

Although Lazarus was ever one to speak with a tone befitting one who knew more than most, it had become clear over time that Lazarus rarely spoke at all unless he was sure of himself. In that way, the fact that he did not immediately respond to Boromir's question revealed more truth than he meant to. When he finally spoke in answer, it was with a dread wariness.

"I do not trust them," he said at last. "I trust her."

"Her?" asked Sam. "Begging your pardon, master, but if you mean to say there are women-folk among them who's outside, then I confess I can't rightly tell the difference. Which one do you mean?"

Lazarus' eyes passed over Samwise with a softness he seemed to reserve for the hobbits alone. "Time will teach you to notice the little differences. As for who, I speak of Iylas, the white-skinned one whom I spoke with earlier. She is their captain, and therefore for now is the voice of authority among them."

Boromir didn't like the way Lazarus added 'for now' to his explanation. Lazarus hadn't proven himself to be someone who took to pessimism, not if he could help it. So his addition of 'for now' seemed to be by intent.

"I take you to mean that you know this Iylas?" Legolas asked. "If these which you have named Eliksni are indeed as perilous as you say, which of them, if not she, aught we to be wary of?"

At this Lazarus did not respond immediately, though it seemed to Boromir the answer was already upon his lips.

"I don't know," he said. "All of them, maybe. Maybe none of them. I know only Iylas' loyalties; the others I do not. In what measure they hold allegiance to her I cannot guess, nor will I. Rather, I fear that come our exit out of the East Gate, their loyalties will be made all too clear, much to our peril."

Gimli tapped his two-headed axe against the stone beneath his feet. "Why then do you say we should lead them out? Would it not be safer to sneak away and make our escape in silence?"

Lazarus shook his head. "That's all but impossible now. Our waking engagement demanded that we relocate, and we are fortunate to have been brought to such a safe place to rest our heads. I say 'safe', for even if we are at once betrayed and set upon by the Eliksni – which I say would surely be against their captain's wishes – their presence gives us protection against other evils which might come seeking us. At least for now the danger they pose is turned to our favor. In any case, they have been trapped in the labyrinth of Moria for much too long, and with the prospect of escape by our guidance dangled before them, I fully expect they will behave themselves long enough to arrive at the East gate at least. Beyond that, I can be sure of nothing."

Lazarus fell silent, his explanation complete and the Fellowship was left to ruminate in the dim light of their quarters.

Boromir pressed his lips together tightly in distaste. He wasn't keen to trust his or any of their Company's safety to the uncertain goodwill of such folk as Lazarus described. Indeed, it appeared that even the wizard harbored reservations, save for their captain whom he seemed to regard with explicit trust…

"If they are so difficult to trust, why dost thou then confide in this captain of theirs, this Iylas?" Boromir asked, for it was obvious by now that Lazarus and the Eliksni in question knew each other well, sharing some hidden history that bonded them.

"That is a long story… Longer than what is left of the night in any case." If Lazarus was annoyed by their battery of questions, he didn't show it. Contrarily, a small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, and he gave Boromir a look that revealed deep within a wealth of memories replete with the fulness of both many joys and many more sorrows. "And speaking of the night, we should make use of what's left of it and get some sleep. We've come a long way since the morning last, and our rest was disturbed ere our strength was restored. I doubt they'll get up to any mischief tonight, but I will keep watch all the same."

Legolas set down his pack by one wall and tore his eyes away from the many blinking lights and his ears from the whine of indistinct noise. "Would you not rather rest, Lazarus? You have slept as little as we, and if your wisdom is true and we are safe for the night, should not it be you who is the most rested of us all, the better to be keen of eye and mind?"

But the wizard shook his head with an appreciative expression. "No. My eyes are less tired than yours, I think, and my mind will not let me sleep. So I'll put both to work watching and thinking."

They were comforting words, but Boromir wondered if any of them would be able to find within them the peace to sleep. The Eliksni, or Fallen, had an altogether unwholesome look to them, and it was not Boromir's experience that such things be suffered to trust. If it were up to him, he'd put each of them to the sword without hesitation, though he was hardly foolhardy enough to discount the disparity of their numbers, nor the measure of their skill. Unlike vicious, squat, uncoordinated orcs whom Boromir (tall and broad-shouldered Gondorian that he was) found straightforward enough to deal with, their brief clash told him that he would be very unwise indeed to underestimate their violent talents.

He vividly recalled the speed and power behind the stabbing steel that rang against his sword and shield. Considering that the creature in fact had four arms made him wonder how in the blur of motion and madness he had actually managed to defend himself without more than a bruise here or there.

It certainly made him worry now that they were all so vulnerably sequestered in this chamber. But… it seemed that Lazarus' presence and his queer familiarity with their chief was, for the moment, enough to dissuade any further assaults, and that would have to be enough for him to try and find a mote of rest.

He lay his head upon his mat, his back to the hobbits and eyes toward the door, and didn't dare to leave either his shield or his sword too far from hand; anything that came through with ill intent would find him a wall to sturdy to pass through. At the very least, his sword was broad enough, and his arm long enough to carve a safe swath of the space within the room; enough to ward away anyone too eager to think the halflings easy prey.

His eyes closed uneasily.

--

Lahpaks scuttled quietly across the stark white dust of the moon's surface, his eyes vigilantly looking for any of the customarily ever-abundant threats, though he knew that this far out, there were unlikely to be anything of the sort. At the very least, there shouldn't be...

Because the Human's moon possessed no atmosphere, and thus, no weather, there was no wind or rain to cover his tracks. Instead, he used small hand-held flotation pads that him enabled him to skim across the dusty white surface, with nary a track to be traced. Additionally, he made sure to always look for tracks where others had touched the ground before, and only ever step in those places, if he needed to step at all.

In two hands he held a large sack which he clutched to his body tightly, unwilling to let go of it even if he were to die, and with which he traveled like this for many miles, uttering nothing, and fearing everything.

Eventually he came to the edge of a meteoric crater, less dusty than its fellows, from which he leaped with all his might in the deceptively high gravity.

He landed on the rocky bottom without any issue continued on his way to the center, where there stood a large stone, half buried in the dust.

Looking this way and that one final time, he lifted the rock, revealing it to be a hollow fabrication, and underneath, a stairway down.

Lahpaks took a moment to let his eyes adjust to the must dimmer lighting of the manufactured passageway before continuing forward. There was a guard posted… but he was asleep…

Lahpaks gave him a punch in the ribs to wake him up.

The tunnels weren't that confusing, but they did span quite a way underneath the crater above. Unlike more organized Houses, they didn't have the means to compete strategically with their rivals and enemies, so learning how to hide in plain sight was a skill that all Eliksni had to have – or learn – before joining.

Winding his way left and right, he came at last to the quartermaster, who recognized him instantly.

"Back again," he muttered. It wasn't a question.

"Yes, quartermaster Vessiks. I am back again." And setting down the pack in his arms he withdrew a large bundle of miscellaneous bits and bobs, carefully strapped together to prevent noisily shifting in transit.

Vessiks grunted and took the package, unwrapping its bindings and laying the goods out before him in an organized fashion. It was said that Vessiks' passion was for meticulous organization; all things had a place, and all things belong in those places, or else they did not belong at all. It was that skill – or curse, maybe – that landed the Eliksni in the position of quartermaster.

The older Eliksni worked quietly, looking over everything he touched with a discerning eye; mechanical parts, bundles of cloth, canisters of ether, weapon batteries, a few weapons themselves including a pristine shockblade, and datapads that would no doubt need to be sliced into before they could be repurposed.

Vessiks diligently placed each item in a specific bin behind him for eventual refurbishment.

"Is that all?" Vessiks asked.

Any other person would wonder if the elder Eliksni wasn't disappointed by Lahpaks's haul, but the younger one knew better.

"I brought much today, yes?"

Vessiks nodded. "You did."

"All good things?"

Vessiks nodded again. "Many good things."

Smiling, Lahpaks held out his hands expectantly. "Then compensation, as is due."

Vessiks looked between Lahpaks's dusty hands and his station and grumbled under his hissing breath. Nevertheless, he reached behind himself with a secondary arm and placed a fresh ether bale in front of him.

Lahpaks took the bale and examined it. Nine rations… double that if he conserved carefully.

He clutched the thing close to his chest, nodding his thanks to the quartermaster, though not before adding, "Should it not be twelve rations?"

Vessiks shook his head definitively. "I have already given twelve rations today. Traded for a Shank. You have brought me Shank parts. A whole shank is worth more than bits of one. Nine rations."

Grimacing at his bad luck, Lahpaks frowned and asked, "Who?"

To which Vessiks' impassive face bore an almost imperceptible smirk. "You know."

Lahpaks cursed but didn't make to argue anymore. It would have done no good to argue with the unflappable Vessiks. Instead, he turned away without another word, slinking back to his room with mild irritation. It was not a long walk, but it was enough time for him to suppress his frustration as he entered the door of his domicile.

Inside of it were several hammocks, bunks, and miscellaneous junk that needed to be cleaned up for repurposing… sometime. Two consoles and a single thin, blue-light lamp in the corner were the only sources of light in the room, though the constantly shifting information on the screens meant the light was never steady, brightening and darkening with each new frame. One screen showed technical data for a device that was clearly in the early stages of development.

Most of that development was scattered across the floor.

The other screen bore a strange entertainment package; it was a human program, scavenged from somewhere on the planet a long time ago. The program dealt with showing and talking over images of sea creatures both great and small; plain and majestic.

He immediately recognized it as the favorite movie of one of his companions.

The room was otherwise empty, all his bunkmates having left on their own salvaging excursions long ago. Lahpaks was lucky to have found the broken Shank shell when he did. An early haul meant an early rest for this lucky Eliksni.

Stripping off his gear he wiped his body down, making special effort to get the abominably clingy moondust off of his hands and feet and out of the deeper crevices of his carapace.

That done, he pulled himself up into a hammock.

A sudden sound caught his attention.

Across the room, a bundle of the blankets shifted quietly.

Schooling his features, Lahpaks lowered himself back onto the floor and toed his way over to the mass. With two arms crossed across his chest and two hands on the blankets bearing the emblem of House Exile, he pulled them away, revealing the most anomalous of his companions.

No sooner had the blankets lifted clear of their face than a hidden shockshiv flashed from underneath.

Obviously, waking a sleeping someone was pointedly rude, to say nothing of being mortally unsafe in Eliksni society. If the Great Machine – what the humans called the Traveler – was the source of blessings and goodness in the world, then its counterpart, that which stood in diametric opposition to it, was what the humans called "the Darkness." In Eliksni society, it had another name; "That-which-cannot-be-taken-from." And to them, those who could be stolen from were deserving of their theft, for who can respect a creature who cannot even protect his own things. But the Shadow… Nothing could steal from it. The most you could claim from it is pain. And thus, it was worthy of respect.

In the same vein, he very much respected the Eliksni below him, the one in whose hand was now gripped a supremely sharp shiv.

He could never steal from them.

The face that had been covered by the blanket scrunched up unpleasantly, and four pale blue eyes squinted open irritably at the sudden chilling draught.

However, despite the obvious threat, he had no reason to fear any real harm from them. Even in a waking stupor, her eyes were formidably sharp.

"You cost me three rations," Lahpaks glowered, waving his ether bale in the other's face.

The notably feminine features of her face looked up at him blankly for a moment before growling in irritation, snatching the blanket back from his grasp and enshrouding her body within it once more.

"Because you are a turtle," she grumbled out through her muffled veil, as if that explained everything.

Lahpaks snorted in annoyance. "An insult does not sting if I cannot understand it."

He'd heard her speak of "turtles" before, referencing the very same movie playing on the screen, which he assumed she must have fallen asleep watching… again. Though, he wasn't sure exactly what they were. Earth biology held no interest to him.

Unlike she, he didn't bother trying to understand the language or the culture of the Light-thieves. Instead he simple assumed, safely, that she was insulting him and left it at that.

He huffed indignantly and let her re-cocoon herself in her blanket.

Hauling himself back onto his hammock, he drank deep of his ether ration. It was an otherwise good day; might as well reward himself.

--

The concept of night and day didn't really exist on the moon of Earth. It orbited the planet below in the prograde direction, completing one revolution roughly every twenty-eight days. One seven-day week would afford them darkness, while the other three weeks would be offer stark light in varying degrees of intensity, though always glaring. However, in the safety of their compound, the only way anyone could the time was via a chronometer.

Iylas' eyes opened to the rapid beeping of one such chronometer that sounded from somewhere beyond her cocoon of warmth.

Mildly disoriented in the lightless dark of her shelter, she reached a three-clawed hand out to grope for the offending device, found it, and pulled it back in.

The cool rush of recycled air that flowed in the moment the "seal" of her shell was breached made her hiss unpleasantly as she looked at the device.

"04:00," it read.

It was a human chronometer, designed specifically for their twenty-four hour days on the emerald and azure planet that hung perpetual in the lunar sky beyond. Even if she wasn't on Earth anymore, it was nonetheless useful to regulate her days and nights in this obscure place.

Having hauled a whole Shank for nearly eight kilometers after spending nearly half the hours of the "day" scavenging before finding it and dedicating the other half of the day to its reclamation, she was understandably exceedingly exhausted by the time she returned to the Burrow.

Decompressing from her ordeal, she turned on Blue Planet, scrubbed off the bleached powder that had collected on her body, and immediately bundled up in her blankets as she watched the program for the many-thousandth time.

Far from bored doing so, Earth's oceans were fascinating to her: the different shapes and sizes, diets and domains of the multitudinous creatures. And she loved to watch as the creatures who lived… or used to live in the blue waters swam about with ignorant grace and power. The voice of the narrator who spoke was soothing, and it would not be the first time she fell asleep to the combination of his dulcet human tone tones and the languidly wriggling ocean ecology.

But now it was time to rise.

Regretfully peeling the layers of blankets off of her body, she sat up and stretched her four arms lazily letting her strained breath out with a sigh.

She looked around the room.

With a maximum occupancy of eight residents, the room was home to half that number. Currently, it only housed two; Lahpaks who was currently rolled up in his hammock, and herself.

Where Kikliks and Sivildris were, she didn't know, though she suspected they were still out looking for something to bring back to the Burrow.

As most things were in Eliksni society, and especially in the House of Exile, they operated under a meritocracy; you either pull your weight, or you get cut out. And if you do pull your weight, then the

"cream will rise to the top" as the human saying went.

She didn't know what it meant, but it sounded nice.

Lifting her naked body out of bed, she dressed herself, heedless of the soundly slumbering Lahpaks just a few feet away.

Exile society being what it was, especially their little cadre, privacy was a luxury their current living arrangements couldn't support. But, far from comfortable with her own nudity, she was fortunate that their expeditions out on to the moon's surface were so out of sync that she rarely had to deal with them, even days at a time. She was thankful that today was one such a day.

Over her legs and shoulders she slipped on her meager armor along with the few rags of faded, moon-dusted green cloth bearing the symbol of House Exile around her waist. But most important of all of her ensemble…

Reaching into the depths of her blanket cocoon, she withdrew a long, weathered leather coat. It was an item she would die to keep, for it was the most precious thing to her; a lingering symbol of her life and the chance that she was given so long ago…

She slipped her hands into its long sleeves. It was made for a creature several inches taller than her, and it showed in the long sleeves and the worn coattails that just barely avoided dragging on the ground.

Many of her fellows mocked the garment, commenting that it was clearly made for a two-armed human, and could only imagine the awkwardness of having only two sleeves for her four arms. But Iylas wasn't so convinced. Because of her smaller frame compared to the coat's original owner, she had ample room to sleeve her primary arms and to tuck her secondaries in at her sides. Thus, when she stood upright, her secondary arms were all but concealed.

It was an advantage she'd taken advantage of numerous times when a would-be thief tested their luck against her thinking her secondary arms docked; they thus learned to be wary of a concealed pistol or pair of knifes hidden beneath that coat.

She even went so far as to claim that the coat suited an Eliksni more than it did its original human owner, and after so many failed attempts to out-draw her, those in the know had little reason to contend her opinion on the matter.

From her nest Iylas pulled out her ether rations and her shockshiv, which she learned long ago never to sleep without. Eliksni society was harsh, and she had learned to be harsh in return. It made her strong. Made her fierce. It also made her few friends, but friendship rarely meant anything but a ploy to steal from a fellow Dreg. She could do without such 'friendship.'

Her rations she stuffed into her coat's many pockets, patting herself down as she counted the various supplies gathered via a mental checklist.

Having left the program running when she went to sleep, Iylas touched the console to shut it off, retrieving the data chip which she placed into a small lockbox and stuffed into her bag. She gave Lahpaks's sleeping form a passing glance as she exited the room closing the door behind her.

She wound her way through the maze-like structure of the Burrow until she arrived at the entrance, and with a purposeful stride, she marched up to Vessiks (who seemed never to sleep) and demanded-… requested her things.

Old Vessiks gave her a look. A long look, as he always did.

"Where are you going?" he asked.

"Not the accelerator," she said simply, her four eyes unblinkingly clear.

Vessiks had an uncanny knack for seeing through lies. It was unnerving whenever he called her out for it… So if subtle lies were going to be seen through anyway, she elected to simply be blatant with them.

The Captain grunted through his respirator.

"Do not go there," he said directly. "The Hive swarm in that place. They say one of their gods is rallying an army there. Even the Light-thieves dare not approach."

"That is good to know," she said with a thankful nod, clarifying, "not that I intend to go anywhere near it," which was, of course, the lie.

Vessiks stared her down in silence, a look which she weathered to the best of her ability.

Although he was a Captain, he was a strange fellow, prone to bouts of whimsy and thoughtfulness… when you got on his good side. His bad side included a pair of razor-sharp shockblades. Maybe it was his temperament. Maybe it was some event in his past. In any case, he wasn't the kind to chastise his subordinates with anything more than a few words. Usually, that was all he needed.

An extended hiss exited Vessiks' respirator, though he brooked no further commentary. Instead, he reached behind and opened a locker over which Iylas' name was scratched. From it, he withdrew a shock pistol, several web mines, and several suitable batteries.

Loading a battery into the pistol and checking its charge, she holstered it on her hip with a flourish around her finger.

Two of Vessiks' four eyes narrowed. "You always spin it."

Iylas blinked at him curiously, not catching his meaning as she stuffed the web mines into her pack.

"Your pistol. Every time you load it, you spin it around your finger."

She looked down at her hip where her gun now rested. She looked at her hand that had just put it there.

"Ah, I suppose it's a habit," she explained a bit lamely.

Vessiks fixed her with her a long look.

It was not an Eliksni habit…

"W-Well, I should get going." She gave a short barking cough and turned to leave… only to stop and about face. "Right. My rifle," she amended, two hands held out ready to receive.

Vessiks blinked at her. "It's broken," he replied.

"Does being broken prevent me from having it?"

The rifle in question was an old wire rifle she'd picked up from the corpse of a Vandal that had been viciously savaged by a… well, probably Hive. But though they'd taken every strip of flesh, they left its equipment to deteriorate in the sun.

It was bent, broken, and missing many important pieces. But it was something that no other Dreg would have; wire rifles were a symbol of the rank of Vandal, a sign of competency and trust. Now, not every Vandal used a wire rifle, but every Vandal certainly had one.

Iylas' captain, Sekar, had allowed her to keep it, declaring that it would be the means by which she may achieve promotion. She had only to find all the necessary parts and put it back together. Except it wasn't so simple a task; she was not permitted to source the parts from other Eliksni, and she couldn't strip them from a functional wire rifle. She would have to find and craft the parts herself.

Vessiks growled a deep baritone but eventually relented, retrieving and setting the defunct device into her hands.

She gave a respectful bow as was due and slung the rifle over her shoulder as she turned and left.

"Venture not too near the yawning pit beyond the accelerator," Vessiks warned after her, drawing her attention back to him. A series of uncharacteristically anxious clicks echoed from beyond his respirator. "Reports of Light-thief activity surrounding that place have grown in number these past many cycles. More every day."

His warning needed no conclusion.

A shiver threatened to run down her limbs, but she managed to suppress it ere it showed.

Instead, she genuflected with due respect and vanished down the hallway, the echoing clicks of her scuttling limbs trailing in her wake.

--

In the House of Exile, friendship was not counted as a particularly virtuous quality. Comradery, sure, but not friendship. After all, the self-assurance of friendship may dull the senses, and leave one open to being shanked in the back, or have their precious things stolen by a trusted "friend."

Iylas learned this truth the hard way long ago. However, Lahpaks was someone who occupied a precarious position somewhere between friend and ally. He was an Eliksni who was as cunning as any of their people, and was quite capable with a shockblade, even when he was only a two-handed Dreg. Well, he was a still a Dreg, in any case. As was she. But they were fortunate that those ancient aspects of Eliksni society weren't so fiercely enforced by their Kell-less leadership within the House of Exile; the simple truth of the matter was that they needed every extra appendage they could get.

Lahpaks was apt to put all four of his to good work, usually tinkering on this and that, repurposing old technology to suit new purposes.

Contrarily, she was far less of a tinkerer than he was, a well-known fact which prompted Sekar to bestow upon her the challenge of independently refurbishing her salvaged wire rifle in the first place. Nevertheless, she was far from technologically illiterate; she simply preferred to spend her time studying the bones of human society.

Before the human Whirlwind – what they called "the Collapse" – theirs was a culture based on the free flow of information. Their "internet," the medium by which this information traveled, fell apart as the various servers hosting the individual domains, including the outsourced server farms that hosted most of the more prevalent sites, were destroyed and abandoned when the Darkness came to Sol.

In the centuries since then, most of those servers were forgotten and so fell into disrepair. Free for Eliksni salvage.

While parsing the information abandoned on those ancient machines, she came across many things. Whole petabyte drives of information! She was inundated with a monstrous hoard of foreign ideas and concepts! Among these bits of data – movies, games, stories written and narrated – was the a concept of an anti-gravity sled that humans would precariously balance on top of, even as they glided over the surface of the ground at dizzyingly accelerated speeds.

It was a needlessly dangerous device; any minute shift in weight could send the rider tumbling to the ground, and with the speeds the boards were capable of reaching, serious injury or death was possible – rather, likely.

But…

There was a certain allure to the idea.

After she shared the rough concept of the device with Lahpaks, the male Eliksni was intrigued. And so, they set out to build improved models based on the shortcoming of the human's designs, and more aptly suited to their different physiology.

The result of those many months of hard work were a pair of grav-sleds that, while ordinarily collapsed into a folded form, could unfold additional stabilizing fins to steady their riders, and juiced up with enough power to support two riders if needed; thus, they justified the use of resources.

It wasn't a 'hoverboard'. It was a 'medical sled'.

Two very different things!

She unfolded the device and tossed it in front of her. It gave off a dull hum and steadied itself several inches above the ground. With a leap, she landed on it precisely where she wanted, tipping it forward with her momentum and triggering its acceleration, speeding away from the mouth of the enclave and toward the distant particle accelerator.

It was by no means a short distance. It would take several hours at best before even the sight of its colossal structure would glint in the stark distance.

So, sliding a visor of vaguely opaque material over her eyes to shut out the blinding glare of the Sol system's bright yellow star, Iylas settled in for a lengthy and hopefully calm flight to the abandoned science installation over the next horizon.

--

The atmosphere of the Earth's moon – an atmosphere it had no physical ability of sustain, yet it did – was warm on her skin, the stark golden light of the Sun beaming on her from high above. The coat she wore bore the brunt of the sun's vigor and kept her cool in ways the wind whipping by her did not.

Ahead, a sprawling complex of scattered buildings came quickly into view, as if it were suddenly unveiled by a deactivated shimmer-cloak. She angled her hoverboard toward the one with the largest silhouette. Ruins dotted the landscape, each one empty and decaying like a corpse, only these corpses held the promise of treasure that Iylas could not reasonably ignore.

Aiming for one with a sufficiently dilapidated partition through which she could enter without much trouble, she dismounted with a practiced leap that simultaneously deactivated and folded her board, which she tucked under her arm carefully and quickly dipped into the shadows.

Human technology was a buffet of different wonderful and strange things, yet that abundance of differences often led to a scavenger's frustration. Unlike Eliksni society which had enjoyed a prolonged period of time under the auspices of the Great Machine, Humanity had been graced by its patronage for only a short period of time before the Whirlwind came for them too. Because of that, as their intellect and technology advanced rapidly, so too did the developers and producers of said technology. How many different and similar organizations worked independently to achieve different and similar ends? Two corporations might engineer two ways to accomplish the same goal, utilizing wildly different methods in the process.

Because Humanity simply didn't have the time to cement a more monolithic technological base from which to build from, and because of their nationalistic divisions that necessitated differentiated methodologies, it was possible to find in the ruins of those nations wildly different technologies – often experimental and usually completely incompatible with even other Human technology, much less anything Eliksni-made.

It was for this reason Iylas was eager about this particular area. Previously discovered, this zone had been reported to possess many parts that could most easily be integrated or modified to suit Eliksni equipment. The only reason it wasn't already picked clean was…

Shriiiieeek!

A bone chilling cry carried its over the distant wind, and Iylas felt her body freeze her eyes scanned the bleached dunes of dust that was the Moon's surface.

Hive infested this place...

It had been ordered by Exile command that no Eliksni was to set foot on Hive territory unless so ordered. The general consensus was that House Exile couldn't afford bleed careless loses to an inexhaustible enemy.

Well, a seemingly inexhaustible enemy anyway.

Iylas however (hardly the first to risk her life in the attempt) knew that that meant only the bravest or foolhardy scavenger would willingly disobey orders to loot these off-limits areas.

The odds of her collecting something of significant value was proportionately high in this place.

She waited silently, waiting for some answering cry to go up in response to the first, listening for a sign of danger or a mobilization.

…

Nothing.

She let out a steady breath and continued to pick her way through the building's broken girders and dead circuitry brushing and blowing Moon-dust from her trinkets where it coiled and twisted into plumes that would have made her nose tingle dangerously were it not for the respirator that was firmly sealed over her mouth.

This particular facility, she'd been told, was known to hold equipment that conducted arc-currents with incredible efficiency. If Iylas was lucky enough, she might be able to find enough raw salvage of treated material to convert into a barrel for her rifle.

Although Eliksni society was communal by tradition, in practice, it was anything but. The voyage through the Long Dark had left their culture bent and warped, just like her rifle. Whatever it had once been, it no longer was, and it would take more than one replacement part to fix the whole thing. And even if they managed to somehow do that, things would never go back to the way they were before.

Can a machine that has had all of its pieces replaced really be called the same machine?

As a result, what had become of them suited the human moniker – Fallen. Iylas hadn't been born on Riis, so she couldn't say she knew what things had been like before, but she had enjoyed at least a taste of that sort of tradition before… before…

She stopped her sifting with a micropacitor in her hand, its arc charge long since faded thanks to a severely bent shell that belied the state of its internal structure.

She knew that Eliksni… no… Fallen society was irreparable. It could never go back to the way it was in tales told of times long gone. It could only move forward and make something new of itself. But that required leadership, and there wasn't a Kel or Baron in any House she could name – Exile least of all – with the merit or vision to see such an endeavor to fruition. Oh, there were plenty with the ambition, but none with the qualities that she would be inclined to follow.

If she were to submit herself to the authority of such an extraordinary being – some Kel of Kels – it would require he or she be someone who valued the lives of their subordinates. Someone who would lead from the fore, not the aft. Someone strong, but kind. Abundant in wealth, but considerate to the needy not by expectation, but by choice. Someone with a magnetic personality, and an infectious dream of a better tomorrow.

An optimist. No, a realist!

…Maybe a mix of both?

A gentle leader. A fierce warrior. A skilled statesman. A fair adjudicator. Loyal, courageous, and ambitious.

Her standards were, she recognized, very greedy. No such leader existed in among their kind now. At least, none she'd ever known before, none she knew of now, and none she expected to ever see. An ideal Kel like that… only the most sheltered of hatchlings had the ability to dream of fantasies like that anymore.

She knew this better than most… The universe was just too cruel for fantasies.

Rrrrrrrrrraaah…!

A faint cry, like a whisper on the wind wound its way through the geometry of the structure. She stilled as she waited, listening for an answer.

Considering the distance, she couldn't be sure that it was actually Hive, but considering she was in a zone that was expressly forbidden by Exile command, she doubted that roar had come from any Eliksni mouth.

If it was Hive, then a singular cry didn't mean much. It was when many cries went up in succession that she knew the danger had heightened and her time was limited.

Unlike the cry before which was shrill and piercing, this one was born of a frame much larger.

When it came to evading Hive, or in the worst case fighting them, Thrall and Acolyte-morphs were one thing as long as they were in modest quantities. Small as her body was, she wasn't a spectacular fighter; she had neither the skills nor the tools suitable for some heroic fight which would end with her the victor.

However, Knight- and Wizard-morphs… she never dared to tangle with them. She'd tried her best to cover her tracks, but if by chance they had caught her scent-!

Booooom…!

A distant rumble shuddered gently beneath her feet, vibrations extending deep into the superstructure of the decaying facility. Her eyes quickly scanned the room for signs of collapse as rivulets of dust skittered in little plumes from the ceiling.

Could they be trying to bring down the building?

'No, that's unlikely,' she reasoned. Gluttons for violence and death as they were, even Hive had to feed their troops; if a whole host of Eliksni warriors were holed up in a bunker, the Hive might care less about leveling it. But if they though there might be a few tasty morsels they could catch… Either way, it seemed unreasonable to her.

Though, she had been wrong before.

Sweeping an armful of miscellaneous junk into her bag, she strapped it over her shoulder and scurried for the exit. Human structures were generally built with redundancy in mind. This commonly extended to doors, many of which were clearly marked with "EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY."

Iylas knew that, while that was exactly what she was looking for, opening such a door ran the risk of triggering an automated alarm klaxon that would draw every Hive within a mile radius to her position within minutes.

If the access she'd entered in through was compromised by either degrading integrity or enemy presence then she wouldn't have a choice but to hope the alarm system of the door she would by needs retreat to had failed over the course of centuries of disuse…

Optimally, she hoped to avoid taking the risk and simply rush out the gaping hole in the side of the building from whence she entered.

Booom. Bo-Boom, boom!

The rumble through the air brought her to an unsteady halt, and she debated what the echoing sounds meant in relation to her senses. The closer she came to the main entryway, the thunder from outside seemed not to resonate so strongly in the structure itself, which gave her the impression that it wasn't some sort of sustained barrage meant to either flush her out or bring the facility down on top of her head.

So, what then?

P-P-Pah! P-P-Pah! P-P-Pah! Boom!

Iylas blinked to herself in surprise as the bassy rumbles were cut by striking staccato sounds. She found a semblance of recognition in its pattern.

'Gunfire?' she thought. 'Yes, yes, that's gunfire!'

Her steps faltered for a brief second before she wiled herself on faster.

'But… who's fighting who?'

The answer to that question, she feared, she already knew. Unlike either Hive or Eliksni technology, human firearms were more varied in ordinance and employment. The staccato bursts of sound she heard were eerily similar to the distant echo of a human burst-fire rifle. So unless some other Eliksni had followed her intent in disobedience, wielding a human weapon stead of a shockpistol or other Riis-made firearm…

Beams of bleaching sunlight shown up ahead, and the sounds of battle were now all-too crisp. She felt her mouth go dry and her limbs shake nervously. Cautiously she approached the entryway, a secondary hand gripping the hilt of her shiv, her primaries holding her shock pistol at the ready. She wrapped her fingers around the edge of the opening and peaked out.

P-P-PAH! P-P-PAH! BOOM!! P-P-PAH!

ROOOOAARRR!

There was nothing in her sight as her vision cleared the edge of the collapsed wall that served as the entryway, but the sounds were unsettlingly crisp and clear. Hooking her claws onto the outer structure of the wall, she clambered up skillfully to peek over the top of the roof, minding her stealthiness as she sought the source of the sounds of battle.

'There!'

It wasn't exactly hard to spy.

A golden light bloomed like a second Sun and took with it a whole half of a nearby prefab with a thunderous bass. In the wake of the blast, shrill shrieks wailed in agony before falling morbidly silent.

As if in response, a louder, larger roar went up from her left, followed by luminant blue blasts that crossed from one side of her vision to the other.

Thoom! Thoom! Thoom! Thoom!

The distinct sound of a Boomer drumming its warbeat of disintegration.

Light flashed golden and cerulean as combat unseen sent dust and debris high into the sky, only periodically drowning out the slavering of slackened jaws and bellows of death-hungry monsters.

Iylas turned her eyes this way and that, looking for the shadows or flickering movement coming her way. Seeing nothing, she dared to raise herself onto the roof fully, turning her eyes to follow the path of burning combat as it weaved its way through the complex of abandoned buildings.

Every time light and sparks flew up into the sky, followed by a spray of black gore, she wondered if the conflict would end, the Hive having caught and obliterated their quarry. But every time her wonder was betrayed, and the struggle continued.

Left, right, back and forth the chase continued, her fear of death overshadowed by a strange, inexplicably morbid curiosity…

Suddenly, she felt a shark pain in her ankle and her footing faltered, her body crashing to the surface of the roof with a clang! In the same movement, she felt her body slide back, falling over the side with a forceful pull and slam into the white dusty powder below.

A thick plume of white particles kicked up as she coughed, the wind momentarily knocked out of her, and she saw with ice-cold recognition as a horrid eyeless face stared at her through the dust, jaw full of clacking teeth, body vigorous with wiry strength, and stomach growling through its mouth with desperate need.

A Thrall had its three-fingered talons clasped tight around her leg, its razor-sharp claws drawing blood straight from her flesh.

"SHRAAAAHH!!"

It cried at her with an excited hunger, salivating maw slickened with an appetite wetted with anticipation for fresh and tender Eliksni meat and marrow.

She slashed at it with her shiv, severing its claw from its arm, leaving only a stump from which spurted a dribble of black blood.

It recoiled in pain, but Iylas knew better than to think it would retreat. The life of a Thrall was a pitiful, desperate affair – kill and eat, or die.

She scuttled away, drawing herself to her feet just in time to catch the full force of the creature as it crashed into her with a charging leap. She – unlike the gaunt grunt, however – had the advantage of an extra pair of arms. In a flicker of desperate movement, she dropped her pistol into her other secondary hand and grabbed at the Thrall's wrists with her primaries, its talons scratching desperately at the air where it wanted her flesh to be.

She stabbed the dagger into its belly with four or five swift thrusts before plunging the thing into its chest.

That seemed enough to curb its hunger enough to cause it to retreat a step, its hands grasping at its open wounds painfully. She wondered if it was considering trying to escape, to heal its injuries and survive desperately as all of its kind were wont to do.

She wasn't going to give it the chance.

A cerulean bolt of charged arc vaporized a round, smoking hole the size of a quarter into its broad forehead.

Its head snapped back from the recoil, and it stumbled. She squeezed off a second bolt, striking it in the lower jaw, blowing a hole clean through its mouth and out the back of its neck.

A third shot was not needed.

The Thrall fell to the ground, extremities twitching the last lingering dregs of its life away, pale dunes soaked up its black blood greedily.

Iylas allowed herself a breath of relief as she took a step back. A suddenly shooting pain lanced up her leg, and she fell to her knees. Two hands instinctively clutched at the place the pain was, and the looked down to see shredded flesh where the Thralls fingers had sliced through skin, muscle, and tendons.

"Aaagh…!"

She swore loudly, belated muting herself with a pained hiss, a palm coming up to clamp over her mouth, only to realize her teeth were sunk deep into the flesh of her own hand.

The pain in her ankle was offset slightly by the fresh pain from her bite, but it did very little. Even with just a glance, she knew she wouldn't be running on this leg any time soon…

All the while, her four eyes scanned her surroundings, fearing another Thrall hidden somewhere in her blind spot. She saw none, but she knew that meant nothing.

She needed to leave.

She needed to leave now.

With hobbling steps, she pressed her hands to the ground and began limp away on five limbs, favoring her injured foot and paying no heed to painful burn of moon dirt being pressed into the open wound of her hand.

She had not gone six steps before a great ruckus went up from behind her and a bright flash that cast a stark shadow before her. She flinched and stumbled, the raw heat of the fire warming her in a blink; her heart thundered in her chest with a fright and the turned reflexively to see what it was that had burnt so violently, only to see a large black… thing eclipse her vision.

Then that thing careened into her at nearly twenty klicks a second.

Her skull rattled as a heavy weight slammed into her, and she had just enough awareness between the motion and the pain to realize the surface of the celestial body cartwheel like a cycle-drum in her vision… at least, for the moment between contact with the ground when she dared to open her eyes.

When her tumble came to a stop, she felt as if she'd been run over by the armored end of a speeding Pike, and if she didn't know better, the way her vision swam in her skull gave her no reason to think she hadn't.

"ROOAAAAHH!!"

She flinched with a jerk and flipped onto her hindquarters, facing the suddenly towering form of a dreadful Hive Knight as it stomped forward with footfalls heavy enough to be felt meters away.

It was a terrifying sight; frightful enough to look at from a distance behind the safety of a rangefinder. But seeing it up close… Its impassive face, it teeth all too reminiscent of a human skull, its eyes glowing with emerald soulfire, its indomitable plodding as its heavy feet trod the rapidly narrowing distance between them, Boomer and cleaver in hand…

It stood like a tower and walked like a mountain. If it weren't for its growling that she could feel vibrate in her chest even from there, she could have mistaken it for a machine… not that knowing it wasn't did anything to diminish its machine-like march.

She knew if she somehow survived this, she would never again dare to venture near enough to be caught in its three-eyed gaze again.

Her leg kicked against the sand as she tried to stand only for fall back down with a pain like a searing iron poker was digging around in her veins.

Survive? Survive what? Inevitability?

Hopelessness flushed her body of all strength. She tried to raise her gun arm to fire. She tried to raise her knife arm to ward off its approach. She tried use her free arms to flee it.

Nothing moved. Not an arm. Not her legs. Not even her eyes which followed the cold sheen of golden sunshine that seemed to drown in the dark steel of its blade.

A sheen of golden sunshine that seemed to grow brighter-

Searing viscera splattered across Iylas' face as a volley of golden-white light speared into the Knight with the form and force of a cannon, sending the thing reeling with a cry full of equal measures pain and hatred. And no sooner had it done so than a blur of white camouflaged cloth crashed into the beast with the force of a freight train, driving the thing back with deceptive strength and mass.

For a moment, Iylas was left at a loss for words… at a lost for even thought. Had she been saved? Who had saved her? What had saved her?

It took her a second longer than it should have to notice the familiar form of a human clambering on the Knight's carapace. Or rather, it was grappling with it, hands alight with empyrean flame that melted the Hive's shell like it was butter, splattering at their feet like drops of grease.

With a heave, the Knight raised its foe above its head and threw it, sending it whirling through the air before it hit the ground with a roll too graceful to be natural. It was almost as if the human had rolled into a feather-light float that cushioned its recovery.

It was covered head to toe in white. Or rather, it was a mix of patterned geometry; whites, grays, and speckled blacks that blended well with the environment of the moon. Its head was obscured by a faceless helmet that bore two, silver-coated, forward-thrust horns which seemed to be the only distinguishing part of its outfit.

It tore three long divots in the dirt as its feet and hand dug deep into the moon's surface, finally coming to a stop nearly twenty meters away. But before it had even come to a halt, its body was already in motions, legs pumping as it narrowed the distance between it and the Knight again, which was already aiming its Boomer at the human with charged arc energy-

The human slammed into the Knight in an impossible instant.

For a moment Iylas lost track of it; it had been there – running. And then it was shoulder-first into the Knight's carapace, a crackling white light arcing off of its body as the Knight was thrown back into what remained of the rubble with a cacophonous crash.

The human's helm turned askance, just enough for her to realize that its eyes – hidden under its opaque visor – were looking at her.

Humans were known to have a physical reaction to unpleasant sensations that they liked to call "skin-crawling." Eliksni did not have such a sensation in their physiology. However, in that moment, she felt as if she knew exactly what they meant.

This was no ordinary human. No, there was no doubt about it. No avoiding a doubtless knowing.

A Light-thief.

The evidence – a stolen power that crackled and burned in its many-fingered hands.

The image – a figure taller in spirit than in form; bravery bigger than Cabal or Kel.

It turned towards her and stepped.

Her muscles seized.

Move… Move… Move, move, move, move…!

She commanded. She begged. But whether it was the shock of the sudden violence, or the degree to which the violence had escalated beyond her, or perhaps simply the weight of the Light-thief's presence, the most her body obliged her was to lethargically drag her hindquarters through the dust in a pitiful, crawling retreat.

'Move, damn it!'

The human reached out, it fingers splayed like a fan, as if preparing to cast some sort of spell…

Then a deafening roar, like skimmer-jets searing cold air overhead. The Light-thief turned, but too late-!

An flash of onyx light sliced just above their shoulders so fast Iylas almost didn't see it… and no sooner had she than the human's head tilted at an unnatural angle and flew from its body like a careless stone tossed away. Its body stood standing for half a second before it tumbled to the ground, headless – lifeless.

"ROOOOOOOOOOAAAAAARRR!!!"

The Hive Knight bellowed a thunderous cry of victory and war, its head lifted high to the naked starry sky. A crimson red blood dripped from the sword held tight in its grasp, running down the length of its edge, over the guard and across the monster's chitinous knuckles. It chanted, holding its weapon high as it spoke in rhythmic refrains. It uttered a name she recognized from somewhere…

Crota.

Wasn't it the name of a god they worshipped?

Its gaze fell from the heavens and looked at the cooling corpse of its foe, traveling across its shape with careful scrutiny, as if it were looking for something… waiting for something…

But in its inspections, its three eyes didn't fail to catch the trail of three-toed footprints that lead from where it stood to where she lay.

The emerald fire in its eyes seemed to glow brighter.

"Durcas broho nash… Crota shach biel'kah!" It spoke, its voice like tortured metal screaming in white hot pain.

Its large feet stomped towards her, each step rumbling through the ground even from a dozen meters distance.

Something in her instincts – contrary to what had compelled her to remain still at the Light-thief's approach – flooded her limbs with vigor, and she scrambled away. Her fingers wrapped around something familiar in the dust, and as she raised it with deadly intent towards the Knight, she realized it was her shock pistol.

Packets of streaking plasma blasted from the both barrels of her weapon, slamming into her foe with enough power to chip and melt its chitin carapace. But whatever damage was done was either negligible at best or superficial at worst, as it shrugged off its new wounds and trundled on toward her, its sword arm rising higher with every step.

Its pursuit was rapid compared to her retreat, and it gained a meter on her with every stride until a final, ominous step landed between her legs.

"Lethlak gohk prashn," it uttered deeply from its throat.

Was it praise? Was it a curse? Iylas couldn't begin to guess at the inscrutable meaning of Hive-speech as it sliced like knives in her ears. Her finger kept squeezing the trigger of her pistol, shot after shot after shot leaving pockets of superheated matter across its broad chest the crest of tis head.

It raised arm rose to the highest height, and she realized that in a moment, it would fall with enough power to cleave her clean in twain. She could pour a thousand batteries of shots into its body and not slow its advance even a little.

She gazed up at it, a moment of time plucked from the stream of eternity and dilated into hundredths and thousandths. She could see with vivid clarity the gleam of Sun as it flicked along the angled edge of its descending slab of otherworldly, death-dealing steel. She could see the very licking tendrils of emerald flame that danced in its triplicate eyes. She could see the shifting of its muscles in the small places its thick armored plates didn't conceal.

She watched as the angle of blade shifted in a downward decent, the edge aligned just so to perfectly cleave her into two equal halves. She watched as the white-hot pockmarks of arc-borne bolts seared its shell. She watched as the drifting debris of broken orbital satellites streaked in gleaming flickers of light across the starry sky. She watched the expressionless mask of the Knight's face tilt, giving the impression of a death-thirsty grin.

Then it whirled.

With a movement too strange and unnatural, its downward stroke broke at a ninety-degree angle as its arm swung around as far as its shoulder socket could allow. There was a ringing of metal and the snap-hiss of scorching air.

A flash of golden light erupted from behind the Knight, and Iylas was left bewildered for a moment, stunned that she wasn't yet dead. It had been so sudden… and so expected… that she was almost left disappointed that her obvious fate had been somehow changed. What had compelled the Knight to alter its blades course? What immediate fear had distracted its mind?

Her answer came as the edge of its weapon crashed against another; its umbral Hive-iron scraping against a blade of golden, burning light.

The Light-thief stood again, as if it had never been dead. The head that had been split from its shoulders now bore down upon the Knight, their gazes as locked as their swords.

The Knight's roar of frustration and defiance was met by a rushing surge of fire, and the carapace that had so easily shrugged off her pistol shots now crackled and singed in the sheer proximity of the Light-thief's presence.

But now, unlike before, it was as if the human was coated in the light and heat of the Sun, as metal and stone, dust and flesh smoked and seared, boiled and popped in its proximity.

The umbral sword that Iylas knew could cut through the densest of matter like it were butter pressed against the sword of the human. Only now, it seemed to warp. It grew hot, bright, and the edge of the luminant saber bit into it just by touching its surface. The strength that could lift a starship was brought to bear against the human all at once, and yet the human, for all its diminutive stature might imply, belied an even great strength and mass, as it not only withstood the Knight's effort, but also exceeded it.

With an audible cry from within its helm, it slashed down, tossing the sword-bearing arm of the Knight aside and with a flicker-stroke, drew a line of white molten flesh up from the Hive's hip to its shoulder.

The Hive bellowed in agony but did not back down. Taking its sword in both hands it swung down with all its might and main, both physical and paracausal. Did it intend to cut the moon itself in half? That was the impression Iylas had of the strength behind the Knight's stroke.

The human raised its blade above its head and – with one hand pressed against the edge of its sword – stopped the blow dead.

There was a deafening scrape and scream of tortured metal and flesh as the force of the strike brought the length of fearsomely edged death near the to human's helm. No, it pierced it! Perhaps not enough to touch the flesh beneath, but enough to crack its visorless faceplate and sever one of its adorned horns!

She watched in wonder and horror as the smaller alien somehow held firm against the power of the attack, arms shaking and knees buckling but never breaking.

The fire that was leashed to the blade of the Light-thief lashed out, slashing like knives and roiling like solar flares that crashed against the eclipsing body of the Knight. But the Knight… its flesh burning, its blade melting, its muscles sloughing, two of its three eyes bursting like overripe fruits of emerald flame… it did not yield. In fact, it seemed almost to Iylas that for all of the armored colossus' rapidly accumulating wounds, it grew all the more terrible with each infliction each. Like every terrible pain only fueled a fury that transcended its own life.

The human's sword was sharper. Its power burned brighter. Its odds greater. Yet despite all that, it was losing. About to lose. The saber of Light was about to cut through the cleaver of Dark, yet it would not be without cost, as Iylas could see – foresee! – the next moment like a vision; hungering blade would break, and in so doing deal a mortal wound. The blade of light would sputter and die, and the Knight would be left standing. Not for much longer, but long enough to make sure the Guardian did not rise from its grave again…

Then, what would become of her…?

A survivalist compulsion flooded her veins with need. It wasn't something she consciously thought of. Rather, it was instinct. Something inside her – the part that spent its entire existence thinking only of survival – understood what her waking mind did not yet realize. That this chance, this moment, was fleeting, and once gone it would never come again.

Now, she needed to act.

Now, she needed to act.

Now.

She needed.

TO ACT!

A shrill cry went up into the Lunar air, a primeval thing that came from countless eons of evolution, both natural and not. It was her voice. A cry of war and violence and death.

She was on her feet.

She was in the air.

She was on the Knight's back.

Her blade – when had she picked it up again? – plunged deep into the viscera of the Knight's shoulder, twisting and stabbing with every flex and flick of her wrist. Two hands held onto its shell, and two held her hilt. Her toe-talons dug deep into the back of the Hive's knees as she hid in the silhouette cast by the Light-thief's scorching Light. But even the sanctuary of its shadow only offered so much safety, and she felt her skin blister and sear – a meager measure of the wrath poured out upon it from its foe.

It threw back its head and roared, frustration and rage pouring from its throat in a greasy black ichor that was its blood. That motion, while meaningless in any other situation, was crucial here…

Keen-sensed and silent, the human seized the moment.

The Hive's blade broke, cleaving down with forward force… just as she had seen…

But though the motion was the same, there was a difference.

She had offered it a distraction.

Meager. Minor. Like a mayfly…

…But enough.

Enough.

Its balance was off, and its muscles torn. It lacked the leverage. It lacked the force.

It swerved its lumbering torso, arm swinging out wide to try and strike her as she clung to its back. She held on tight, plunging her dagger in over, and over, and over again. But even with her iron grip on the thing's broad carapace back, the force of its mighty swing threw made her finger's slip, and scrambled to reaffirm her grip, only for the Knight to swing 'round the other way, and she found her fingers clutching at air for a moment before striking the ground and tumbling away.

She swiftly righted herself and looked up to see the Knight – whose whirling limbs had actually been far more forceful than she'd thought – throw its assailants away with an overpowering shrug.

It stood, searching – and finding – with its remaining eye for the agonizing flea that had bitten its neck. A tortured, rumbling growl rolled in her direction as it took up the hilt of its broken blade and rose to its feet, its muscles primed to lunge at her.

She skittered back some paces even as it took its first step, panic in her veins. It wouldn't take but a few strides before it would be upon her…!

But its wrathful advance was stopped by the grasping glove of the human's left hand as it's wrapped its quintet of digits around the hilt of the narrow blade that was sunken into the Knight's taut, fibrous neck muscles. And at once, there was a cry of effort (though from whom she couldn't tell) and suddenly all of the moon was bathed in a bright, colorless void.

The light that had burned golden flashed with a cold, blinding white, flashing with an intensity that eclipsed all colors in a sheet of empty void. Lightning struck from the cloudless sky, not in the single, jagged, momentary flare of interconnecting electrons, but a continuous, unceasing thunder of plasma channel, striking with explosive shockwaves of sonic booms that turned her bones to powder inside her skin; the rapid expansion of air caused by the superheated temperature meeting the significantly cooler Lunar air manifested in a roar of violence that blasted her eyes, ears… everything.

She was deaf; deaf insofar as all she could hear was noise – a noise so constant and uniform in its deafening volume she could almost tune it out into silence.

She was blind; blind insofar as all she could see was white – a white so blinding that all else fell away, and even the ashen ground below and the umbral sky above were washed away. A sheer obscurity of luminant pale.

Except… amidst the din was a roar. Two roars. One of suffering, anguish, rage, and hatred. Another of will, of conviction, of ending.

Amidst the white was a darkness; a severe strobing silhouette of two figures. One atop the other, hand outstretched to grasp the hilt of a borrowed blade plunged into the neck of its foe.

…

It was over.

The light was gone. The sound rumbled on, but she was so deaf, she didn't hear it.

The terrorizing form of the hulking Knight was gone. All that remained was a statue of pure black, body carbon-scored entirely and utterly. It stood with arms outstretched, mouth agape in a silent scream of rage and resentment.

The human stood behind it, unphased. Untouched. Untroubled.

The eye of the storm.

The familiar hilt of the iconic weapon in its grip reduced to superheated slag that slipped through its fingers like molten tears, hissing and steaming as it splashed against the black-scorched ground at its feet.

It stepped back. Admired its work. Gave it a push.

The Knight collapsed forward, hitting the ground face-first and shattering like loose clay just barely held together. Sand washed away by the cosmic waves.

It stepped heedlessly through the ashes, foot crushing the skull and crest in a single dismissive stomp.

She raised her arms in front of her reflexively. Lethargically. Why was she so slow? Like wading through the crushing pressure of dark blue water.

No wait, the darkness was her eyes going blind, or… was her consciousness fading?

It came to a stop at her feet, its head tilting at a curious angle as it looked down at her.

It didn't seem perturbed by her. Not even concerned.

It bent its legs to squat down, resting its elbows on its knees calmly.

Contemplating.

What? She didn't know.

Why was her vision narrowing?

She blinked at the encroaching darkness, commanding it away without effect, sound and sight dimming beyond her ability to vie against.

She vaguely realized that her shock pistol lay at her side, and that unthinking, desperate part of her brain that demanded survival reached for it, knowing only that it was a tool that might grant her salvation.

She must have looked like a slug.

It caught her hand without effort, her wrist held in its crushing-

No, wait… It didn't hurt... Did it?

Were her nerves dimming too?

It picked up her weapon with its other hand, held it before its face and examined it.

Would it kill her with her own weapon? There was a definite irony in the notion…

It turned its facelessness towards her.

Maybe it was her near-unconsciousness playing tricks on her, but she swore she could almost see a glimmer of light from between the cracks in its face plate; a reflection upon the peculiar clear coat that kept the human eye moist…

A part of her wanted to laugh; the same part that half-believed this monster really might have been some faceless devil.

It spoke to her. Not that she could hear it well, but it entered her deafened ears as a muffled, low buzz.

Actually, it was a little clearer than she expected.

What was that again?

She wanted to ask. No, she did ask. She felt a vibration in her throat as she spoke in words she couldn't hear herself.

It reached up and pulled at the base of its helm, lifting it from its head in a single smooth motion.

She couldn't see it well, so…

Why did she think it looked so familiar?

It spoke again, repeating what it had already said.

She still couldn't hear it, but she could read its fleshy lips, if with a great deal of difficulty.

Strangely, it almost looked like it said something along the lines of, "…Ne tas yu."

108

Black Lister

Aug 8, 2024