The Lands of Shadow - Free RP

[Moriel]

Helcë etta Anga
Minas Morgul
(Private with Frost)

She chuckled softly, watching him dress. “You’ll be back,” she murmured, with a soupçon of command, and followed him from the room with her eyes. As the door to her chambers closed behind him, she completed her thought. “...if she doesn’t eat you alive.” Sombelenë had a fair amount of confidence in Frost’s ability to complete his task and return from Angmar in one piece, but it was no more or less than a trial. If he ran afoul of her former protegee and did not return... he wouldn’t have been worth her time anyway. Setting aside the writing desk, she swung her legs over the edge of the bed and arose, catching up a brief dressing gown of silken gold and wrapping it about herself as she crossed the room. Halting where Frost had stood before the wall, she spread her fingers and set them against the stone, where the faintest heat and trace of his still lingered. She inhaled and closed her eyes, and beheld the sense of tiny, skittering legs. A tendril chased them, overcame them, wrapped their host, and with a swift wringing motion, snuffed out its tiny scream. Satisfied, she opened her eyes and turned from the wall.

Sombelenë sidled back into the outer room of her chambers, legs long and bare beneath the dressing gown, and her hair tumbled about her face and down her back in soft waves, belying their habitual elegance. From across the room came a soft click, and the section of wall directly across from the portal to her bedroom shifted. With the faintest of creaks, another hidden door opened, and Swiltang emerged. If the level of danger in the room had been high in the moment after Sombelenë had displayed her power to Frost it was nothing to now; the ancient red boldog eyes burning from the lean, twisted orc’s face with a baleful malevolence, but Sombelenë merely smiled, and continued about the business of retrieving her garments. “Did you really have to subject me to that?” Swiltang hissed, one hand curling into fist as he strode to the center of the room, where a half-finished glass of wine stood abandoned next to the chaise. His hand released and caught it up roughly, pouring the fine liquid down his throat as Sombelenë laughed.

“You could have left at any time,” she jeered, tossing her discarded gown over the back of the tall chair her former guest had occupied, “Why, you could have stepped out of your hide the moment I began it. You would have ruined the mood I so carefully set, but you could have done it. Yet you chose to stay. And watch.” Sombelenë lifted her yellow eyes to meet his gaze in mockery. “You like to watch, don’t you Swiltang?” In two quick strides he had leapt across what remained of the room and, in an echo of her ravaging of Frost, slammed her back against the wall next to her door with a hand around her neck, forcing her back with his greater height and strength. But Sombelenë’s feet danced as she was pushed across the floor, and she laughed and laughed, her throat quivering with mirth beneath the clawed black fingers that wrapped it, and the glare of the orc who squeezed them, his free fist smashed into the wall above her head. “Jealousy? No, never from you. Deprivation? You could have joined us. He’s an adventurous soul, my new acquisition. But no, you prefer to keep your playthings to yourself.”

“You stink of him.” Swiltang snarled, his face inches from Sombelenë’s. What little air remained between them scorched, tension enflaming the room around the oddly matched pair, orc and Avar. Her dressing gown had come open, and his eyes dropped to her naked flesh, taking in every swell and curve, until a slight ringing in his ears caused his gaze to snap up again. “None of that, witch. You know your tricks won’t- aah!” His sharp noise of pain came as her hand which unnoticed by him, had fisted itself in his hair, jerked sharply. “Witch,” Sombelenë growled, her fingers loosening slightly to rub the hank of his hair between them. It was a single long strip that grew from the center of Swiltang’s skull from forehead to nape and tailed down his back, alike in color and texture to that of a black horse, and her fingers gnarled in its depths. “elf, Avar, huonissë.. so many names you have for me, Swiltang. Did you hear the one my new pet devised?”

“Yes,” he spat, and her chuckle was husky.

“Are we not star-children together, my ghâshbúrz?" Swiltang burning eyes narrowed, never swerving from hers. This game they had played throughout the Ages was fraught with malice and violence, and only ever ended one way. The space between them shrank to a sliver, and it was a wonder the air did not combust. His deep and resonant voice, so unlike most of those who resembled him, and with whose race he was called, rasped as he repeated,

“You stink of him, Sombelenë.”

“Why don’t you do something about it then?” she whispered, her fingers tightening again in his hair. “May the Ice be cold,”

“And the Iron be cruel,” he rejoined.

Red and yellow eyes consumed one another, the space between them closed, and the door of the bedchamber ground shut behind them.

-Fin-

[Winddancer]

The small hairs on the back of her neck prickled. A shiver of dread kept flushing across her scalp and down her back, making her jittery. Ever scrape of her boot against the stone had her scanning the place for any dangers, though she never saw anything tangible that she could actually deal with. A part of her savoured the emotions this passage brough forth in her, remembering the many centuries of making her way down to her torture chambers. They would be gone now, she suddenly thought. Destroyed under the crumbling tower. All the prisoners she had there would have been killed. She felt no remorse, they meant nothing to her anyway, they were there for her to gleen information from. Information that was now useless and unecessary with Sauron gone.

Master. How could he be gone? Once again she searched for him in her mind, seeking out his vile presence. A feel of slimy barbed hooks that were always pushing and probing, wanting more and more of her. There was a fair amount of relief, of not having to feel him prod at her every thought. But at the same time it had created such a huge void, a cold emptiness. She was alone now.

No, she wasn't alone. She could now feel him. Still at the infancy of their encounter and yet to truly grasp the extent of his powers, she did not fully comprehend what she had gotten herself into. Foolish as it was, it was likely the only reason she had not just curled up and died. 'Lenthir, I have got to find Lenthir.' Was a chant that constantly reverberated around in her mind, keeping the sense of horror and dread at bay. She was the source of terror and dread, she was not going to succomb to her petty fears and let some dark and dingy passageway frighten her and make her run away.

With more determination than she felt, she made her way to the first fork in the road and paused to look down at each. She saw the message about the two corridors and frowned. Don't break the glass? She looked around to see where this glass was, but there was none. When she looked back at the message to see if she could gleen any other meaning from it, it felt as if her eyes got pulled in different directions, leaving her with a headache as she finally gave up trying to look at it. Rubbing at her eyes, she instead looked at the passageways themselves.

The drop did not look all that appealing, though it did lead towards a light source. Having no torches or other means of seeing in the dark, it seemed like the more prudent of the two choices. Still she looked towards the other and almost recoiled back with a small squeaked noise. Her name. Her Westron name. A shiver wracked her body and she had to swallow hard to clear the tightening of her throat. That darkness was familiar. She sniffed the air and was forced to cough, struggling not to heave. Another shiver shook her slight frame. One did well to stay clear of that darkness. Just like she had around Cirith Ungol.

Armed with just a small dagger, she was definitely not equipped to face what she thought was down that dark corridor, her options quickly narrowing to one. Carefully she turned away from the dark corridor, never completely turning her back on it while she took in the almost sheer drop the other corridor sported. Going into a squat, she positioned herself so that she would slide almost sideways down on her boots, the very same ones she had stolen from the guard in Minas Tirth. She kept her dagger sheathed, tucked away safely incase she tumbled. The last thing she wanted was to fall and end up stabbing herself.

With one more wary glance at the dark corridor, she drew in a deep breath and as slow as she could manage she began the slide down the slope.

[Baphởmet]

The Halls of Pazuzu

If a location could smile, if stones could laugh, if the air could steeple it’s fingers, the Halls of Pazuzu would. The fly was moving downward. Down, down, down, down, down, and down. Further down the road. It had made the correct choice. Or at least it had not made the wrong choice. The fly was traversing the web, dancing along on an oblivious track through The Spiral.

The stones shivered, vibrated, and pulsed like something alive. The great yawning maw slammed shut. The Spiral cracked and splintered, breaking into a shower of stone. The whispers leaked out of the stones, oozed like the slime of a snail until they pooled at the bottom of The Spiral. It bubbled and hissed before evaporating into the air. The sound of the passage closing could be heard all the way down to where the fly had managed to find itself, its tiny stinger held aloft in a laughable attempt to portray bravery and fortitude. That would not last long. The Halls breathed. Putrid wind, borne from some place far, far away, skittered and crawled along the walls, the smell of a hundred open graves, of burning hair, and of fungal growth. Rats. Rats. Thousands and thousands of rats. Rats began chittered excitedly, hungrily. Rapacious, unending, and sanguine, they began their climb up. Rats eat flies. Their voices build to a horrible symphony, instruments demented and vile. The Spiral drank in the sound, pulling and extracting it. The sound was dispersed through out the infinite tunnels, building and dying and building again in an eternal cycle of madness.

Down the fly went. Down and down and down, spiraling ever downward. How far down had it travelled? How long? How much further could it go? The floors the fly travelled down were slick, as if they had been covered in oil. It clung to the fly, inert but concerning nonetheless. The floors gradually, gradually leveled out and the fly was presented with a new choice.

The tunnel forked into four different tunnels, all of them identical yawning black voids, but all varying in size. The first was tall, its ceiling lost amidst the clawing shadows. The second was smaller, but wider, large enough for three or more little flies to pass through without difficulty. The third was wide enough for just one little fly, and tall enough that its head would scrape the ceiling. Finally, the fourth was barely more than a hole, the fly could crawl through it if she wanted.

So what does the little fly do? Which tunnel does it take? Or does it turn around and try to go back?

[Winddancer]

No. This was not right. Something was wrong. Seeing the 4 opening's she fell to her knees, her whole body displaying the exhaustion she felt deep in her bones. She just wanted to sleep. And drink. She tried to lick her dry cracked lips, but only succeeded in making her tongue stick to them. Looking down, she saw her hands were shaking, fingers barely able to hold the dagger. This place was wrong. This was not a mountain in Mordor. She knew them all, having traversed every single path that littered every single mountain range around Mordor. She raised a dirty hand and weakly rubbed at her temple wondering if she had lost her mind. Had that creature succeeded where Sauron had failed? Was she insane?

She let out a weak hoarse laughter that did sound like she had finally lost her mind, the sound eerily bouncing off of the unnatural walls. She immediately stopped, her sunken eyes darting around fearfully as if the sound would bring more insanity with it. "Kill them all.. I just have to kill them all.. that's it.." she mumbled with a choked sob, her voice cracking with dryness. But which way to go? Her eyes looked at each opening as if it would reveal to her which way to go, but there was nothing. No hint, no breeze of fresh air coming from any of them, nothing that could hint at a sure way out.

Her dirty fingers idly played with the blade of the dagger, her thumb testing the edge. All she had to do was stab it into her heart and all of this would be over. Without conscious thought she even turned the dagger so that the blade pointed towards herself. It would be over in seconds. The sound of the rats when she passed down the slope had been maddening. How could she ever fend off a swarm of those with just a dagger? Best to just end her misery now. Dying by her own hand was far more preferrable than being eaten alive by rats. Right?

Without lifting her head, she peered out through her dirty tresses and eyed each of the passageways again. He was going to win, wasn't he? She could almost hear his laugh and she shivered, the grip on the dagger increasing as her anger flared. "I just want my brother!!" She thought she had screamed it, but all that came out was a hoarse whisper that left her coughing. Leaning forward on her hands she rode out the coughing fit, arms shaking with the effort of keeping her up. She was already on her hands and knees, she might as well crawl into the smaller of the passages, maybe in there there was a quick death waiting.

A small clink sounded as the dagger in her hand hit the stone as she slowly crawled into the smallest of the passages.

[Baphởmet]

The Halls of Pazuzu

"I just want my brother!!"

The fly was shouting its defiance, raging, trying to maintain focus. In a place that cared about reason and order and sanity that might have worked. But this was the Halls of Pazuzu. The stones, or the things that looked like stones at least, drank in the sound like thirsty men. The words clung to the walls like a rancid oil. It dripped down, oozed, and pooled in a congealed, half solid mass. What she’d managed to shout as nothing but a hoarse whisper, came back at her from all angles, louder than the war horns of the orcs. From every angle, every space was filled with cacophonous sound. “I just want my brother. I just want my brother. I just want my brother. Ijustwantmybrother. IjustwantmybrotherIjustwantmybrotherIjustwantmybrother.” The sound echoed impossibly loud, growing in strength and intensity until the walls and stones shook from the force. The entire mountain, if that’s what it was, was threatening to come down on the little fly. It began to crawl into the hole, squeezing and shuffling like a worm blind and thoughtless.

“What makes you think you’re worthy?”

The sound was so delicate, so faint that any but an elf might have missed it. It whispered in the fly’s ear, a voice it would recognize. It was the sound of its brother. The reason it had stepped through that portal and into this endless expanse of tunnels and caverns and crawlspaces.

“He’s lying to you. Your brother is dead. You might as well have killed him. It would have been kinder. Don’t listen to him, he’s a liar. He’s leading you into a trap. You can’t trust him. There’s no one you can trust anymore Winddancer. You’re lost, you can never be found, never be redeemed. There is no recourse for you. Run while you still can. Don’t trust him, he’s a trickster. He’ll turn you inside out and make you eat your own fingers. He’s lying to you. He’s lying to you. Winddancer, he’s lying to you. You can’t trust the words he says, no matter what. Even the truth he tells you is a lie. Don’t break the glass, Winddancer. Remember that. Don’t. Break. The. Glass.”

The voice was tender but frantic, a butterfly released from a cage before being snatched up and returned. The voice was snuffed out like a candle. The empty silence of building anticipation replaced it. It lay across the figure of the fly as it wormed its way through the tunnel. The sounds of rats grew and grew, like it was coming from up ahead. The more the fly crawled, the louder it became. If it stopped, the sound stopped too. If she went forward, the sound redoubled. Was the seething sea of rats ahead, or was it following the fly? Don’t trust sounds in here, little fly. Anything could be the truth, but anything could be a lie. A correct path could tell you a lie while a wrong path could tell you the truth. Truth is relative, though. Isn’t it, little fly? A correct path can turn into a wrong path and drop you into an endless ocean of blood and bile. A wrong path can become the right one as soon as you ignore it. Was crawling on your belly the right choice? Are you a worm or a fly little one?

The more the little fly crawls, the more it transforms from fly to worm, the wider the expanse of empty night opens up before it. What does it do now?

Does the fly continue crawling and attempt to cross the chasm? Or does it try to turn around and go back and try another path?

[Winddancer]

Worthy? The voice stopped her in her tracks, her heart violently pounding with fear. The question was not what had her terrified as she did not consider herself worthy of anything right now, it was that it was his voice. Well how she pictured it would sound like when he had grown up. Just like a human child, Lenthir had had a hight pitched voice too, though his sounded far more melodic that any human child would. His laughter. She had adored his laughter. No matter how foul your mood was, his laughter would fill your heart with joy and have you laughing too in no time.

Cradling her head in her hands, one still holding the dagger, she sobbed as her heart broke again. She was not stupid, of course she did not trust the creature. She trusted no one. But it still tore her soul apart hearing the words that her brother was dead in the voice she imagined he had. It was a torment like none other. She deserved her brother's wrath, his accusations. To some extent his rejection. Because that was what she already feared would happen. But death? She had often thought he was the longer it went with no sign of him. A huge part of her believed he had been killed as surely no minion was that good at covering their tracks. But hearing his voice saying that now, she realised that she had never given up hope of finding him alive. Even if he had been broken and tormented just like her. She needed to see him one more time. Even if it was just for a fleeting moment. She had to know what had become of him, she had to say sorry..

The silence that followed was only shattered by her heartbroken sobs. It felt like ages before they slowed, her body trembling with emotion. Returning slowly to her hands and knees, she had only just begun to crawl forward once more when the sound of the rats had her pushing up one side of the wall, her dagger darting back and forth in front of her as if trying to protect herself. But there was nothing. Just the mind shattering chittering that was enough to drive anyone insane. But she was already half crazy with fear and exhaustion.

Despite how the sound amplified when she moved forward, she added her own scream to the cacophony of chittering and pushed forward, almost stumbling straight out into the chasm that spread out before her. With a startled yelp, she pulled back just before she slipped in. Dirty fingers dug into the rock around her as she sat on her backside, eyes wide with fear. How was she going to get across that? Briefly she looked back at the tunnel and had to swallow a surge of bile that rose to her throat and made her gag. No, she could not go back, not right now.

Brushing a tangled lock of her wild dirty hair aside, she began searching the precipice for any sign of a path that would leed her over or through the chasm.

[Baphởmet]

The Halls of Pazuzu

Stones to the right of it, stones to the left of it, down the gullet of tenebrous shadow crawled the hapless fly. It clung to life as hard as it clung to that dagger. What would it do to defend that life? The tunnels did wonder. The little fly decide its best course of action was to scuttle and scrap forward, around the great yawning chasm, hungry and ill-content. It’s own screams added to the orchestra, the sounds reverberated and bounced and echoed up and down in an endless feedback loop. The stones above the fly shivered and shook, but stones that had hung on for millennia would hold on a little tighter than that. Stones below it rumbled and creaked, as if a stone giant had been awoken from aeon long slumber. But giants are just a myth, right? The rats continue their mad shrieking, yet nary a whisker nor tail of them could be seen. How could that be? They sounded as though they were just within arms reach! The little fly wouldn’t be so bold as to reach her hand out over the abyss and try to touch them would it? Surely it was not so desperate for food as to do that.

But it was all lies, wasn’t it? Or was that a lie? Sooner or later the burden of the lies and maybe lies, half truths would snap the camel’s back, or twist its neck around so far that the head comes off in a bloody mangled mess. The rats weren’t real. They may have been once, but who can say in this endless maze of time and space when and where they were real. They certainly weren’t real here and now. The fly would learn that, or it wouldn’t. The squeaking and chittering and squealing would stop as soon as the fly reached the halfway point around the edge of the chasm.

There was light on the other side. Had there been light there before? No, the fly would have seen that light if it had been there, right? Maybe, or maybe the fly hadn’t seen it. It did now though, and that’s the important point. The light was harsh and fiery, simply looking too long would burn away the sight of any creature.

“What… are… you… doing? You… belong… to… me… and… me… alone.”

The voice of her old master. The Abhorred, the Admirable One, the Cruel, the Giver of Gifts, the Necromancer. Was he still here? Was it still possible that he had survived? It would be no thanks to the little fly, that was for sure. Would he be angry? Would he disappointed? Only the little fly could guess at that.

Still, it must go on. The chasm is… the chasm is changing! Widening! Before it’s very eyes, the great abyss, doorway into night and nothing, was expanding. Yet the tiny hand holds to which the fly clung were not expanding with it. If the fly did not hurry, hurry toward the harsh light of a lidless eye, it would fall forever into sainted oblivion.

What does the fly do now? Does it scurry forward into the light? Or does it crawl downward into the chasm?

[Winddancer]

There was so often a misconcieved perception that she did not know what her victims went through. That she did not understand the torment she put them through and that was why she could do what she did so well. That was a lie. She did what she did so well because she knew what true torment was. She understood every aspect of it, breathed it, lived it and felt it deep in her bones. There was not a pain or torture she did not know and had not felt on her own body and mind.

She did not know she was crying, the tears streaking down her dirty face and creating muddy rivulets on her cheeks. The constant cacophony of the rats shrieks preyed on her addled mind as she sniffling crawled along the chasms edge looking for a path across. Mumbling and sobbing incoherently to herself it was becoming a question of not whether or not she would escape, but if she would escape with her mind intact. She had to force herself to stop thinking about using the dagger on herself, to keep pushing forward, to find a way out. At times her words could be understood conveying a moment of clarity as she refocused her efforts of getting out, her brother's name often spoken as if saying it aloud here in this mad hell could keep her from losing her mind completely.

Shoulders hunched up towards her ears, she scrambled along on all fours. Fingers scraped and scratched ahead of her searching for a pathway out, her knees bloody as the fabric of the pants she had stolen were worn away on the sharp stones beneath her. She lost all sense of direction the moment she moved her fingers from the edge, the darkness so solid that it itself was enough to break her mind. Because she was babbling incoherently to herself it took a few more yards of crawling before she realised that the insane chittering of the rats had stopped. Even though she could not see anything, she still swiveled her head back and forth as is expecting to see a thousand red eyes staring back at her and ready to attack. Shaking, she clutched the dagger in both hands out in front of her, not truly knowing how she would fend off a swarm of rats with just a little blade.

But as the minutes slowly ticked by without anything happening, her body shaking from the tense position she was in, she finally let out a small sob and sat back on her haunches. Deflated, exhausted, she sagged. despair gripped her very soul and clenched tightly making it almost impossible to move or think. She wanted to lie down, to go to sleep. She was so tired. Every breath was a struggle, a battle she had to fight to draw.

"Just for a minute.." she whispered under her breath as she moved to lay down where she was. She just needed to rest her eyes for a moment. Now that the rats were gone, she could close her eyes for a second, right? With a small sobbed noise she shifted and was about to lay down when something out the corner of her eye caught her attention. A light? A light! That had not been there a moment ago, had it?

A surge of adrenaline rushed through her veins and pushed back the debilitating exhaustion. Scrambling uneasily to her feet she stared ahead at the light though soon she had to raise a hand to cover her eyes as it became so bright it blinded her. Blinking away the spots in her eyes, she took careful steps towards it only to stop in her tracks as the voice spoke. Her heart both soared and broke as she recognised His voice. Master! He had come for her! She knew He was not gone. She felt both elation that He had come back for her and at the same time despair as she had not managed to escape His clutches afterall.

"I am! Please, help me get out. I serve only you! I swear!" She could barely speak the words, more of a rasping mumble than anything as she started to stagger in His direction. She fully believed what she said too, instantly forgetting what she had been tasked to do, instantly forgetting her brother. He was all that mattered.

Stumbling forward she finally regained her sight and realised with terror that the chasm was moving, widening! Fear and panic propelled her forward without a second thought, stumbling, crawling and running as best she could towards the blinding light. She kept her head turned down so that she never looked straight at it, instead looking where she was going as best she could.

[Baphởmet]

The Halls of Pazuzu

Fear has a smell. That’s not exactly a secret. Sentient life excretes certain chemicals in the body that make it react to a dangerous or distressing situation. Those chemicals are designed to either force the being to fight or flight. Those chemicals produce a smell that lures predators in, it’s the dinner bell for those at the apex of power. Elves can sense it, humans too, to some extent. A more intelligent predator, one several rungs higher than the most attuned elf, can distinguish the different types of fear. His halls were designed to create a very specific kind of fear, the fear that one is being lied to, that the world they are perceiving is no the real world, the fear of being gaslit, the fear of losing one’s mind. He’d perfected the ways to bring out that fear and he’d been taking it from hundreds and hundreds of individuals over the years. He was old, far older than anyone could have guess. He was a master of manipulation and trickery.

“You… belong… to… me…” the voice said again, more insistent, angrier. The fly begged and pleaded, claimed that it knew its master wasn’t really gone, that it had never betrayed him.

“You… lie… you… abandoned… me… left… Mordor… left… your… home…”

The fly crawled across the chasm, reaching the tunnel’s mouth just as the chasm swallowed up the rest of the cave. There was no going back now. The fly would have to deal with whatever came its way now. If stones could be described as giddy and anticipatory, these stones, the ones that watched the fly travel further and further into the web, would be described as such. The entire edifice of stone shivered and shook, sending a shower of rubble and refuse down onto the little fly. Not enough to bury it, that was not the kind of fear he wanted, that domain belonged to something else entirely.

As the fly entered the cavern of fiery light, it encountered a shadow. Not a shadow of being, but a shadow of unbeing. A shadow of memory. Its master stood there, crown with spikes of midnight. His hand was outstretched, offering the little fly his hand.

“You… failed… me… what… should… I… do… with… you…”

Everything around the little fly already knew what the answer was going to be. The little fly was predictable in its brokenness. That’s why the knife was taken from it. It melted, slipped through it’s fingers like fine sand. An odorless, lifeless breeze then took the sand away and cast it into the abyss behind it.

“I didn’t give you leave to do that.”

This voice was not his, but it came from his form. Wings stretched out from his back, four of them, pointing in all different directions. A harsh, rasping chuckle billowed up from the well of darkness. It was low at first, inaudible to any creature save an elf, but the volume grew and grew and grew. The sound was never more than a soft giggle, but the power of the sound was so great it shook the cavern.

Then he was gone. The silhouette of the fly’s old master was gone too.

“You didn’t think it would be that easy, did you? I told you he was gone, did I not? Would I lie to you?”

The little fly should ignore that voice, but can it? Can one ignore something that’s invading their every thought, every fiber of their being, every memory, ever desire?

“Don’t break the glass, little fly. Don’t. Break. The. Glass.”

Ahead, through the fiery light, the tunnel forked yet again. Only two options this time, if the little fly can manage crawling through its own horrors. Both paths look identical. They both branch away from each other a 45 degree angle, both travel steadily upwards, both have the same fiery light at the end, despite both tunnels being black as pitch.

Which direction does the little fly take? Left or right?

[Lailyn]

Durzhat the Messengorc at some messenger HQ cave or other
“DURZHAT!” A voice bellowed, nearly shaking the cave’s bedrock with its demanding fury and certainly making her knees quake. The mohawked orc was just tucking into a crispy leg of...well, it is better not to say what, but it was making her mouth water so much that little bits of foamy drool had coalesced on the corners of her mouth.

For a moment, she stared dumbly around at the orcs, wondering if she could escape with her food, but the voice yelled again and those ugly faces surrounding her did not emote sympathy.

“DURZHAT!!” It thundered.

Uh oh. She was in trouble. She ripped a piece of meat between her teeth for fortification and barely chewed it before swallowing. With the (unidentified) leg in hand, she leapt from her dank little corner and raced forward. “Right here!”

A menacing orc who towered over here leered at her with one eye. The other was covered with an eye patch. “Did I dismiss you yet?” He asked testily.

Durzhat was not a terribly intelligent orc, but she knew the right answer to this one. “No.”

“THEN WHY THE BLAZING VOLCANO ARE YOU HELPING YOURSELF TO GRUB?!?!”

She gulped. “Just taking...a break.” She cleared her throat. “Statute 5.9 of the Messengorc’s code..defines…that orcs who’ve worked at least...” Her voice faded at the murderous look her boss wore which clearly said she was NOT entitled to a break, not now, and probably not ever. This was slavery plain and simple. She held out the limb of meat to him and tried on a smile…

He thwacked the meat from her hand and it went flying through the air and into the crowd of co-workers who dug in with relish. “You have one more job before you can have a breather.” He explained the who, the where, the what of the message (never the why). The how was impeccably clear to her--it was one of those messages. If only he had started with that, she might have been more willing!

Durzhat stroked the handle of her machete with a fond hand and a terribly eager gleam in her eyes. “I’m on it right away!” These were Durzhat’s favourite kinds of messages to deliver...

[Winddancer]

“You… lie… you… abandoned… me… left… Mordor… left… your… home…”

No! That was a lie! She had been fighting for Him! For Mordor! And then.. and then.. she had been betrayed? Her brows creased as she fought to recall the memory of the day of the Battle. Surely she was mistaken? But no, she had managed to dig out the memory of her mind while incarcerated, surely it must be true as her mind was less addled then even if they had given her medicine to keep her unconscious.

"No! My Lord! I was betrayed!" In her head she was screaming the words, ensuring He could hear her. But as before, her dry throat only allowed for a hoarse grunt. Feverishly she fought to recall who had stabbed her from behind, even closing her eyes as she tried to picture who it was. But try as she might, all she could see was a blurry image of someone on a horse as large as hers. At least that narrowed it down, not many had a great steed in Mordor, most of the army on foot.

Heading forward still, the shower of rubble took her by surprise. Raising both hands above her head, she cried out hoarsely as she imagined the whole mountain coming down and crushing her. Still afraid to die? Even her own mind seemed to want to partake in tormenting her as she threw herself into the cavern's opening and making it clear of the rest of the rubble that still fell just beyond it.

“You… failed… me… what… should… I… do… with… you…”

Her Master continued on as if He had not heard her plea.

"Please! I was betrayed! I serve you, always!"

She had barely grunted out the words as she felt something in her hand and instantly looked down. To her horror she watched as the dagger and only means of defense crumbled into sand and blew away from her fingers.

"NOOOOO!" She screeched with desperation, dropping to her knees her fingers trying to collect the remaining pile of sand before it too blew away. But it was in vain, the sand blowing back out into the endless chasm behind her. For a long moment she stared at her hands in shock, unable to fully comprehend what had just happened and the ramification of being left defenseless and without a means of ending it quickly should she need to.

“I didn’t give you leave to do that.”

Dumbfounded she looked up at the sound of the voice, gawking at her Master as she realised the voice had come from Him. Her eyes widened as wings sprouted out behind Him, falling back in fear and trying to create distance between herself and what she had thought was her Master. The laughter that suddenly erupted caused her to cry out once more, scrambling even further away as she tried to cover her ears as the sound grew, the ground beneath her shaking violently.

Just as quickly as it had started, it suddenly stopped. Leaving her in a defeaning silence that was only pierced by her terrified sobs.

“You didn’t think it would be that easy, did you? I told you he was gone, did I not? Would I lie to you?”

She shook her head, refusing to believe the voice. No! She had seen Him! He had been right there! Though she hoarsely shrieked her protests she knew it was right. While she had seen Him, she had not felt Him in her mind.

"Please.. please don't leave me here.." She hated begging, it was a vile display of weakness and yet she could not stop herself, the words spilling out freely, sobbing them over and over as she cowered against the wall.

“Don’t break the glass, little fly. Don’t. Break. The. Glass.”

"I won't. I won't break the glass." Unaware of answering the voice, she babbled to herself as she hid her head under her arms, curled up into a ball. Unaware of how much time passed before she finally stirred again, she slowly pushed to her knees and then shakily stood, swaying dangerously.

"Out. I need to get out.." Taking an unsure step forward, she mumbled about glass to herself as she headed in the only direction she could go. Reaching the fork in the tunnel she stood for a long moment looking down one and then the other and then she suddenly burst into laughter. Again there was nothing to say which was the correct way, which would lead her out. The laughter quickly died and was replaced by a sob. It was either a 50% chance or 0% depending on whether one led to freedom or neither did. She was going to die in here, wasn't she?

Reaching out a dirty hand, she placed it on the wall of the tunnel and stepped into the one going off to the right. Using the wall to keep her up, she headed either towards her freedom or her death and at this point she wasn't sure which she preferred.

[Baphởmet]

The Halls of Pazuzu

Oh no! The little fly has chosen wrong. Or did it? Is there even a right path to take within this never ending maze? It goes around and around and around, up and down and sideways but does it ever end? Where is the center of the web? Where is the spider? What might happen of the little fly refused to carry on and play along with the little game the Distortion has made it play? The little fly has seen a dozen things by now, which one was real? Because one of them were…

The little fly ambles down the pathway, obvious and breaking, but not yet broken enough. The Spiral is still hungry, and it will eat what it wants. Down the pathway that it took (it would have been the same no matter what path it took) the stone slowly gives way to mirrors. Hundreds of mirrors. Convex mirrors, concave mirrors, rippled mirrors. The entire tunnel is now a vast maze of mirrors and glass. But can the little fly, so far down the bottleneck, tell which is which. If it looks back, there is nothing but mirrors behind it, endless panes of reflective glass spiraling on and on and on. There is no end of this tunnel, there was no beginning. There is just this hallway of mirrors.

There is a door somewhere within the maze, but that door doesn’t like to sit still, it likes to move about, dancing here and there, appearing in front of, behind, above, and below. Find the door within the maze of glass, and find the way out.

But remember the commandment. “Don’t break the Glass.” Should you break that commandment, or follow it?

The path way breaks out in a fractal pattern, any direction along the X, Y, and Z axes. Which way does the little fly go?

[Winddancer]

The eerie light continued to illuminate the tunnel she had staggered down. If she had had a little more presence of mind she would have sought out the source of it to see where it came from, perhaps that helping her with finding out what this place was. But she was barely keeping it together as it was, stumbling and staggering forward like a drunkard on his way home after a night of binging. Her voice echoed off the walls, pitching it back at her and often making her jump, thinking that someone else was here with her in this hell.

At the first mirror she croaked out a cry, jumping back and taking up a defensive stance, noticing that the other had done much the same. She was not alone here? She stayed still, willing the other to make a move first, but they seemed to be employing the exact same tactic as she was. Long quiet moments passed where neither moved, the only sound she could hear was that of her own ragged shallow breaths. Why weren't they moving!?

Should she retreat back down the tunnel? Or dart forward and try and get the upper hand? She had no weapons, but as far as she could tell, neither did the other person as she could see no glint of steel. "Make your move!" She croaked out hoarsely, but was only met with her own voice echoing off of the cold stone. Cursing in black speech she knew she would have to make a move or they would be stood here for all eternity, finally taking a step forward. At that moment so did the other one, causing her to stop immediately again, her hands rising up in front of her protectively. The other did the same.

Brows creasing something niggled at the back of her mind, her hand moving out to one side to test the theory that was brewing in her addled mind. The other matched her movement. Giving a sudden big wave, she grunted several more curses as she saw the other do it too, it finally dawning on her that it was a looking glass. Here? In the middle of a mountain? Mordor was not exactly filled with looking glasses, no one needed them. She had not seen one since.. she could not recall when she last had seen one, her shaking hand rising to scratch at her temple.

The other did the same and she took a careful step forwards, only then realising it was not just one mirror, it was dozens. Hundreds. Stepping up to the first one she had seen, she ran her hand over the cold glass, dirty fingertips running over the image of her face. Was this really her? Mouth agape at what she was seeing, she could not come to terms what was being displayed before her. Surely that was not her. That person looked like a wild man, hair dirty and standing out in all directions, tangled and knotted. Her black hair had once rippled with it's own darkness, now it looked flat and lifeless, just like the rest of her. Blood and dirt covered her face and body, her clothes ripped and torn to shreds, especially at the knees. Big patches of dried blood coloured the dirty fabric, her hand going to her side where she had been stabbed.

How long ago was that? Days? Months? But it was not the dirt or the shredded clothes that held her attention, it was the crazed look in the eyes of the woman before her. They shone with a feverish brightness, the irises like liquid lava. The amount of times she had actually seen her own eyes could be counted on one hand. But it was not the colour that twisted her gut and made her whimper, it was the insane look that they held. She looked demented, like her mind had already snapped.

"No.." she croaked as she covered the glass with her dirty hand, obscuring the eyes. "I am not mad.."

But while she managed to cover the eyes of the one before her, any turning of her head revealed many more staring back at her, the madness flaring in all of them.

"NO!! I am not mad!" She screamed hoarsely, dropping to her knees. "I am not. I am not mad. The glass, don't break the glass." She laughed hysterically as her hand wrapped around a rock at her knees, pulling it closer to her. "I'm not mad. He didn't leave me. I left. I left him." Sobbing she mumbled incoherently as her empty hand braced itself on the glass before her. Glass. Do not break the glass. She laughed hysterically again, followed by more sobs. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry Lenthir. I tried."

Leaning forward she rested her heated forehead on the cool glass, her insane red eyes the last thing she saw before she closed them. "Forgive me.." she whispered as she raised her hand and slammed the rock down onto the looking glass.

[Baphởmet]

Urbog

(With @Lailyn)

Urbog spat. The sickly green and yellow glob of phlegm and wormwood pulp flew through the air and landed with a loud SPLAT on the hot stones. It sizzled, releasing a dank, earthy smell into the air, mixing with the steam around him. He smiled, some of his broken teeth piercing through his thin grey lips. The rest of the orcs around him did not find his action so amusing. He dodged a smooth, polished stone. It clattered on the wall behind him, his smile widened.

“Your aim’s as shire as your face, Colbag!” he said, his voice thin, reedy, and full of savage overconfidence.

“One o’ these day, Urbog. One of these days your bull is gonna catch up to you and it’s gonna tear your guts out o’ your ass. I only hope I’m there to watch the light fade from your eyes.” The orc snarled.

Urbog chuckled and placed the back of his hand on his forehead. “Oh spare me your whining you slobbery ass wipe. Get over it.”

“Enough!” A third orc, bigger and bulkier than both Urbog and Colbag, stood up and slammed a wooden staff hard on the stone ground. “I came here to relax. If the two of you can’t shut your bloody mouths, I’ll rip your teeth out and give ‘em to a bog witch. Shut. The. Hell. Up.”

Urbog shifted the piece of wormwood still in his mouth and smiled, daring Colbag to say anything. The younger orc, though, was sufficiently cowed and sat back down. Grey steam wrapped around him and he obscured. Urbog spat again and took a seat. He inhaled the steam, held his breath as long as he could, then exhaled. The air smelled of wormwood, bog myrtle, and thistle. It was supposed to be relaxing, but Urbog felt more and more on edge. He’d only provoked Colbag for a bit of action, the room was terrifyingly silent otherwise. Kharbad, whenever he held these events, would force the attendees to sit in utter silence for three hours or more. It was a display of dominance, Urbog knew that well enough, and no one had ever challenged that until today. He had not been killed outright, which meant that something even worse could be in store for him. Giving his teeth to a bog witch would be the least of his problems. He fidgeted. It was also possible that nothing would happen to him, he’d simply percolate in his own anxiety until he was a nervous wreck who jumped at shadows. And there were a lot of shadows in Mordor.

Urbog found he could not sit still. No matter how hard he tried to stay still and quiet, there was a nervous energy that spread through him, bouncing in his muscles and bones.

“Sod this!” he finally said, unable to contain himself any longer. He burst up, spat the whole of his wormwood bark into the middle of the room where the steam was issuing forth, and took a swing at the nearest orc to him.

Thankfully, the creature next to him happened to be a youngling, scrawnier and slower than him. He slammed the creature in the jaw with a right hook. There was a deep, resounding, and satisfying sound of breaking bones. He scoffed and scurried away before any of the other score or so orcs decided to get up and join the fight.

He was out of the cavern, breathing the ashy (but less stifflling) air of Mordor. He took in a deep breath, coughed, and wheezed Off in the distance, the red-orange glow of the volcano acted like a second sun, direction, heat, and, looming death. He was a dead man. He knew that. Defying Kharbad like that would have dire consequences. Unless he was protected by some other boss. But who would take him in? And what sort of work would he actually be able to do. He hated it here in Mordor. As chaotic and rowdy as it was, he missed his old home in Cirith Ungol. The balance of power here in Mordor was packed with mob bosses and petty lords like Kharbad, all the orcs swarming to them for protection, work, and sustenance. It was that, or try your luck with one of the Nine in Lugburz. Urbog shuddered. He’d seen what happened to orcs that got on the wrong side of one of them. Watching the living flesh torn off a body in such a fluid motion was terrifying, even for a seasoned orc such as himself.

Would he risk being clanless? He looked back down the tunnel and heard shouts of anger bouncing off the stone walls. They would be coming for him soon. Kharbad would never do it himself of course, the lords and bosses never lowered themselves enough to actually participate in the killing of a deserter, unless it would be seen to benefit them or strengthen their hold over their group.

Maybe he’d try his luck with Lady Ranaru. She was Kharbad’s rival. She’d welcome all the information Urbog could give her. He’d be an asset. He grinned and began walking in the direction of her domain. He only made it seven steps before he stopped. Lady Ranaru was a ruthless, cunning, twisted baggins. She wouldn’t trust a thing he said. She’d torture him, pull the bones right out of his body, to get the information. He shuddered. She’d send him back to Kharbad in a jar as a warning. She was out. He looked south, toward the Sea. There were some communities there he could hide out in. They were controlled by one of the Nine and he’d have to pretend to be a farmer, but at the very least, he’d be protected from Kharbad’s dogs.

“Sod it all,” he shouted out loud and kicked the earth beneath his feet. It sent up a shower of dust, ash, and rubble that blew back on him as a wind came up from nowhere and blasted him in the face with the heat of a furnace. He spat again.

“Sodding bastards,” he muttered. “Can’t just leave an orc in peace to do as he likes, to be left the bloody hell alone?” He looked back at the tunnels. There were pinpricks of light in the distance, torches. They were coming. Quickly, he began running. Running as fast as he could. Running until his lungs felt like they were going to burst. Running until his feet went numb. He couldn’t go home, not now, not ever. For now, he was clanless and alone. He had to make the Sea. He had to…

[Baphởmet]

The Halls of Pazuzu

There are sounds in the deep places of the world that cannot be explained without extraordinary measures. Sounds that defy logic. Sounds the eventually take on a life of their own through those that hear them. Sounds is nothing but a being interpretation. What can be an interpretation of something a lower lifeform could not explain? Myths, legends, lore. Sound is one of the ultimate foundations of them. Dripping deep in the caverns of the Misty Mountains became the living form of Caradhras within just a few wrong interpretations here, some exaggerated campfire stories there. But now the mountain is alive, is it not? Had it always existed? Or had the belief that it was a thing made it real? The mirrored Halls of Pazuzu were as real as anyone wanted them to be, they existed because of people’s fear. Years and years stretched onward back to the great choir. Fear. Fear was a blossoming flower, shaped and crafted by each individual that encountered it. Fear of madness, fear of loneliness, fear of pain. It was all crafted to serve a purpose, a purpose without a master. Until he appeared (and others like him) and began to cultivate it, nurture it, harvest it.

“You aren’t in Wonderland anymore Alice,” a voice whispered savagely next to the fly’s ear. “You’re not in Mordor. Mordor was never real. Not the way you saw it anyway. He would have never let you have it. He never even knew your name. You were nothing. You are nothing. You ought to have died a long time ago.” The voice shifted in the fly’s ears, bouncing from one ear to the other, a disorienting torrent of sound.

“Why didn’t you die? You wanted me to die. Admit it. You wanted me to die so you could be free.”

“That’s why you never found me. You looked with closed eyes so you wouldn’t find me. I was there with you along.”

“You wanted this. You wanted this from the moment I was born. You were jealous of me but you couldn’t kill me yourself. So you just let me go, and feigned looking for me.”

“Was it worth it, dear sister? Did you get everything you wanted? Did you get all the blood and violence your heart craved? Did you sup on fear and loathing? Does your heart fill full of joy and ecstatic rage?”

“You’re not sorry.” The voice was now in both ears, inside the little fly’s head. There was no escaping as it grew louder and louder and louder, so loud the little fly wouldn’t be able to tell the floor from the ceiling. “You’re not sorry. You’re not sorry. You’re not sorry. You’re not sorry. You’re not sorry. You’re not sorry. You’re not sorry. You’re not sorry. You’re not sorry. You’re not sorry. You’re not sorry. You’re not sorry. You’re not sorry. You’re not sorry. You’re not sorry. You’re not sorry. You’re not sorry. You’re not sorry.”

“But you will be…”

The last phrase, barely above the sound of whisper, came as the fly shattered the glass. The sound of breaking was not the sound of shattering glass, but the sound of weeping, the fly’s own tears come back to her like little lost puppies, each mewling for its mother’s attention.

But where is the door now? Did the shattering of the glass, the breaking of the rules, bring it any closer? There is no more light. There is no more sound. There is no more feeling. There is no more smell. The little fly is alone in a void of her own making. The glass is shattered, the mirror broken, the puzzle shredded. The door exists. But does it really? In a realm of madness, only illogical things can make sense. In world of insanity, only the broken can make sense.

What does the little fly do now? Does it stay where it is? Does it move? Does it try to reassemble the glass? Does it try to find the door, wherever that may be?

[Lailyn]

Durzhat pursuing Urbog
(with @Call of Bearthulhu )

Durzhat loped her way through a series of dark and cramped tunnels and caves. Tunnels rank with the putrid scent of rotting flesh, tunnels with stale and oppressive air that threatened to suffocate and choke the life out of anyone who stayed too long and caves crawling with hordes of orcs she had to push and shove her way through. It was good practice if she managed to nick a few fingers, toes or earlobes off anyone who got in her way. What a nice warm-up to the grand finale of her day: delivering the message to one orc named Urbog. The last one he would ever receive if she did her job.

And she would. She never failed. Failure in this job was as good as death, or worse. Durzhat had seen the mangled orcs missing limbs and eyes and ears. Some looked like they’d been flayed and repeatedly drowned in the blazing depths of the almighty volcano, then rolled around on the sharp volcanic rocks just to drive the point of their failure home. Durzhat suppressed a shudder. Having your head lopped off was one of the better options.

Through the tunnels she ran, with her machete beating softly against her back with a familiar pat-pat-pat. She was a hound on the scent. One sniff of the air and she was off in pursuit. Only moments before, she’d been suffering for a break. There were still strings of tendons stuck in her teeth from the leg of meat that went wasted in the jaws of her colleagues and rivals. There would be no breaks for Durzhat until the job was done.

She did not tire or pause to rest. The orc ran onward relentlessly, driven by an insatiable hunger for flesh to raze, a neck to sever and a head so freshly-freed from its body to bring back to her Masters that the blood had not yet congealed. Today’s scent luring her along like a dog on a leash was the hair-rising, nostril-assaulting mix of orc perspiration, wormwood, bog myrtle, and thistle. Urbog had been at the steam room. Durzhat stuck her nose up into the air and inhaled deeply.

When she reached the end of the tunnels, she was met with a wide expanse of dry, black rock and sand hissing with vapors belching up from invisible seams and cracks. Durzhat inhaled again. The scent of her quarry was lost beneath the sulfurous smell that penetrated all things in Mordor and gripped hold never to let go.

In the distance, the pulsing fiery light of the volcano bled into the sky. For a moment, she swore she heard a voice on the hot wind that picked up and she squinted her eyes against the dust. When she looked back again, the volcano was shrouded in a dark shadow. She turned her back on it to secure her confidence that her fate did not lie that way. Not if she found Urbog and got the satisfaction of sinking her machete right through him.

With her scent-trail lost, Durzhat had no choice but to slow her loping race and investigate. Growing impatient while searching, she found a wet spot on the ashy ground. It did not belong. It did not rain here. It was not blood. Tears were a thing unknown. So what else could it be? Durzhat knelt to the ashy ground and slipped one claw through the dampened ash and touched the tip of her tongue to it.

Spit! Orc spit, if she had to guess. It tasted of wormwood...

Durzhat’s face split into a grin, exposing the sharp points of her deformed and crooked teeth. Urbog. She was back on the trail. And by the looks of those gathering torches growing closer, she wasn’t the only one.

Durzhat released a loud and baleful cackle she hoped that skulking Urbog would hear and make him shiver in his filthy little hide. “Ha! Just try an’ outrun Duzhat! Good luck with that ya’ troll-toe-licking mongrels!” she challenged the torch-bearing orc-mob and took off across the plains at menacing speed, hot on Urbog’s footsteps...

[Winddancer]

The sudden silence was like a punch to the gut, her body curling protectively in to an even tighter ball as she lay on the shards of the broken glass. Only the sound of her sobs pushed the crushing silence away, not even feeling how several of the them were piercing her skin. Was this how it was going to end? Laying here feebly on broken glass, sobbing like a child? She had honestly not given much thought to how she would die, always assuming it would be at the hands of someone else, someone either seeking revenge or coveting what she had achieved. That it would be something like this had never even crossed her mind. Losing her mind? Killing herself? Sure she had often entertained ending it all, especially in the beginning, but Lenthir had always been the reason she had never gone through with it, always been the reason she had endured all the torture she had.

Centuries had gone by where she had not given him a single thought or looked for him. Yet she had carried on, dutifully serving her Master. Torturing others. Was he right? Had she wanted her brother dead all along? Was she jealous of him?

Even though it was pitch black all around her, she closed her eyes. Bright images of Lothlórien filling her vision. The smell of the grass and the flowers filled her nose, the feel of the warm sun on her face as she turned to look up at her older brother, before looking back down at the babe in her mother's arms. A sudden twinge of pain in her chest caused her to whimper as she tried to curl up even more, pulling her knees to her chest and gripping her legs tighter to her.

The images flitted to a few years further ahead, where she was chasing after Lenthir, his laughter filling her addled mind. Though close to breaking, whimpering and sobbing as she was, a small smile still pulled at her dry and cracked lips as his laughter rang true like she was back there with him. It died as quickly as it had grown, the images of the fateful day where he got taken suddenly filling her mind. Rocking herself as much as she could while lying down, she tried to stop the images from progressing, wanting desperately to change the outcome. Jealous? No. She was not jealous of him. Wanting him dead? No. At least not to begin with. Had she since wanted it? In some ways, yes. Especially when thinking he would have recieved the same kind of torment she had. Death would definitely have been better. A chance to start over. So yes, she had wished him dead. But not by her hand.

“You’re not sorry.”
“But you will be…”

Before the words had made her cry out in agony, forced her to cover her ears. Ripped at her heart and threatened to break her mind. However..

Something began to niggle in her mind, rippled through her gut. She would be sorry?

Slowly she stopped rocking, the tight grip on her legs loosening. The glass shards tinkled eerily in the darkness as she slowly shifted and sat up, unaware of several shards sticking out of her arm and side. “But you will be…”

Lenthir? No, he would not think that way. Again she heard his bubbling laughter, the same laughter that would make everyone around him join in too. The same boy who had been inconsolable when he had crushed a ladybird to death under his shoe. No, he was not vengeful, hateful, evil. He was not her.

As she shifted into a crosslegged position, her hand brushed a large shard of glass, her fingers closing around it. Pulling it into her lap, she stared down at where it would be, seeing it as clearly as if there had been light. She now had the means to end it all. Holding it like a dagger in both hands, she pointed the sharp edge towards her heart, her ragged breathing slowing. A sense of calm washed over her, knowing this was finally the end, that soon all the pain would be gone. She felt in control again, in control of her own destiny, something she had not felt for thousands of years.

She let out a laughed sob, the irony of it all not lost on her, that she finally felt in control at the moment she intended to kill herself.

“But you will be…”

The four words niggled at her mind again, her fingers twitching on the shard. He was pure, good. He was not her. He would never torture her. Not her brother. Not Lenthir.

Slowly she stood, her legs shaking beneath her as she got to her unsteady feet. She swayed for a long moment as her head rushed, finally able to stretch her back. Rolling her shoulders back, she drew in a deep breath as she faced the darkness all around her. The silence was once more shattered by the sound of breaking glass as she let go of the shard in her hand, unaware of the cuts it had made before she let it go. She could feel the strength that had seen her through thousands of years of torment returning, building up in her stomach and rising up into her chest, allowing her to stand straight despite the exhaustion.

"Enough. Let me go."

Her voice was barely a whisper, dry as the dirt under her feet. But the returning strength could be heard in those four words as she stood her ground, facing off the enemy that she could not even see in the darkness.

[Baphởmet]

The Halls of Pazuzu

The little fly cried and cried, weeping and drying itself out in the midst of a veritable field of broken glass, a garden of jagged edges and blooms of blood. It brought a piece of glass to its chest and threatened to die on the spot. If the halls could laugh, they would. The stone contracted and expanded, shivering with a malevolent mirth. The pitiful little fly was trying to negotiate with itself, demanding that certain memories, real or false, be shaped in a certain way. What did this little fly really want? Did it want to find its sibling to save him, or to destroy him? It claimed it was not jealous, but the stones within the Spiral knew the truth, they knew the truth but it was their job to distort the truth.

“Let me go, let me go, let me go!”

Rather than imitate the fly’s voice, the sound the bubbled and fizzed around it was the voice of a child, mocking and sickly sweet, innocence poisoned by insanity. Did the fly remember this child? Was it one of the fly’s many, many victims? A child left orphaned by the fly’s voracious appetite for death and dismay? A child left to wither and crumble as a result of the fly’s lust for blood? It could be, the fly’s victims were legion. Not near the amount of his victims though.

The fly was a terrifying creature, a being born from pain and misery, shielding itself from its own pain for so long it forgot it had things to manipulate, so intent on causing death and destruction that it didn’t remember it’s own destruction. He was more than willing to remind it, to show the images, the sounds, the smells. A repressed memory was the sweetest fruit.

“If you could cleanse your soul, leave deception far behind, we would never be equal for free I stand, rid of lies but without lies you’d be no more.”

This was a different voice altogether, the collective amalgamative voice of all her victims for hundreds and hundreds of years. Those that had had their torture end. The fly saw herself as merciless, but the only victim it never gave mercy to was itself. The dead knew the truth, the living were the ones that stumbled around in a fog of lies, jumping like fleas from lie to lie, sucking it dry until it could no longer sustain them and the reality of their existence began to strangle them.

Could the little fly find all its lies and come to terms with them? Or would it remain broken until the end of time? He had nothing but time, but the fly did not. If the fly wanted its brother, them time was of the essence. Time was as much an enemy as truth.

For hours and hours and hours the little fly screamed and shouted its defiance at the walls. Time slowed and warped, wrapped around itself then snapped and broken. How long had the fly been in these tunnels, crying and wailing and wallowing away the time? An hour, a year? Time had no meaning within the walls of the Spiral, only the truth (and its absence).

The door approached the fly, warping and twisting and shifting. It was painted red and carved with exacting details of rudimentary, broken figures. Once this door could have adorned the very throne room of Angband itself, a portal into the uttermost hells, but now this door was held within the Spiral. The door was massive, towering over the little fly, casting a long, red shadow. It was too small at the same time, there was no way the little fly could fit. The more the fly watched the door, the more it twisted and warped, stretched and bent. The door was fading, thrumming and evaporating. What could the little fly do? Reality could lay beyond that door, a passage out of the Spiral, but it could lead back to the beginning of the endless maze. Does the fly dare to try? Or does it try to die. There is only one way out of the Spiral. Which is it?

[Baphởmet]

Urbog

(With @Lailyn)

He was beginning to feel faint. Despite the incredible, oppressive heat, Urbog was shivering, sharp cold pains running up and down his arms and legs. How long had he been running? Minutes? Hours? He couldn’t tell. His lungs were on fire, he was breathing in ash and smoke. He coughed and coughed, Urbog hacked and spat. He came to a stop and gasped for breath like a landed fish, his jaw unhinging as he inhaled as much air as he could. More ash and smoke. He coughed violently, spitting blood as he recovered. His legs felt like they had been wrapped in molten iron, they hurt to move; his feet sent shockwaves of pain, his ankles wobbled unsteadily. “Is this it?” the orc managed to ask himself between gasps for breath. “Is this how I’m supposed to go?” He turned and looked back the way he came. The huge gapping maw that had been the mouth of the cavern of Kharbad’s Hold was barely a pinprick in the vast mountains. The volcano dominated his perspective, the huge, monstrous thing that looked as if at any moment it could come to life and stomp all the lesser creatures to bits. The more he looked at it, the more mesmerized he became. It was a vile thing, like a malignant tumor, a scar on the landscape of the gods. And yet, yet it was beautiful, pure energy and power, death in purest form. No dragon, no Balrog, no Nazgûl could ever come close to this thing. A thin, reddish line of drool dripped from his mouth as he stared slack jawed. “I... so… the light… he lies dead, but dreaming… so… of the… I…” he mumbled incoherently, his pupil growing larger and larger until they filled up his entire iris. Light streamed in, it hurt, there was a pounding in his head, a hammer against his skull. Yet he could not look away, did not want to. All he wanted to do now was stare at the great beast, this Megatherion, and worship it. His knees weakened and he tumbled to the ground.

It was in that moment the spell broke. His hand landed on something sharp. He howled in pain as he lifted his hand to the light, it had been pierced by a jagged black stone, pierced all the way through. His fingers twitched and moved unnaturally. Panic began to build in his chest, a sharp, kinetic feeling that made him want to run about in a random circle and scream. His breathing became shallow. Finally, he did scream. Loud and harsh. Trying to stop from vomiting, Urbog pulled the jagged rock from his hand. He screamed louder, the pitch reaching to a near inaudible level. He bit down on his tongue. He tasted blood as he realized he’d bitten off a portion of his tongue. He whimpered and spat a thick stream of blood and phlegm. He screamed again, but covered his mouth with both hands to keep from being too loud.

He stopped suddenly, a mote of dust catching his eye. There was something. Right? He gagged, coughed, and spat. There was something moving out there. He was sure of it. He’d seen something shimmer, something shift, just out of the corner of his eye. He strained his eyes, still recovering from whatever had taken hold of him. His eyes stung and watered. He slumped to the ground, sprawling on the ground like a beetle and scuttled behind a rock. He watched. His eye bounced back and forth, frantically searching for a hint of movement on a vast plain of smoke and rubble. Nothing. He could feel the panic surging in his bones again. There was something out there. There was! He knew what he’d seen. He only had one eye, but he’d learned to trust that eye. He hissed. There! It was a long way off, but there was something. Something small, but moving fast. If he were not so intensely paranoid, he would have just taken it as someone out traveling the plateau by themselves. But he was very paranoid, and every fiber in his being told him this thing was coming for him. It was too far to make out who it was clearly. It was an orc, that much he could tell, the way they blended with the brown tones of the environs about them. And it was just the one. The rest of the kicked ant hill that was Kharbad’s Hold were swarming all the wrong areas. This person, whoever they were, wasn’t part of his old clan. A shiver ran up his spine. If not from Kharbad, then who? There were a million possible answers to that question. He’d angered enough people over his life. Hell, it could have been his own family. They were closing fast, loping like a hungry wolf after wounded quarry, and Urbog was very wounded. He picked himself up with some effort, his breath ragged and uneven. Pain coursed through him at every breath, but that was all secondary. He had to run, he had to keep going. Keep going until he found shelter.

He began to run again, slow and plodding as his energy reserves were already nil. Fear kept him moving, fear of what was behind him, fear of what was in front of him. Urbog could smell his own death on the winds.

[Lailyn]

Durzhat
(with @Ambivalent Octopus)

Urbog kept running, and he could try to run forever for all she cared. He could run until his heart gave out and it eventually would if she had her way. Failure spelled her own death. That was not an option. Durzhat would never stop until she caught him and then she would give him hell for the marathon he was taking her on, not that it was a problem. Running across the plains was one of Durzhat’s favored past-times. There was nothing like breathing in the ashy air and feeling your lungs burn while you raced over sharp rocks and hot sand and the dark mountains became wisps of shadows on the horizon of this vast open space. She ran and ran and while Urbog rested like the weakling he was, Durzhat gained on him with ease like she was born for it.

Durzhat did not know that she, like so many others, had been bred for this singular purpose. For endurance, subservience and of course, cruelty. She was a small cog in a large machine, pushing it ever on and on, powered by her blood and sweat and toiling, toward the ultimate victory for the Lord of Mordor until He held dominion over all lands and all Men and all living things. These great plans were beyond the scope of her knowing or understanding. She just did what she was made for, what she did best: run and kill. Blindly following these two impulses that fed her and suffused her with life, she was as much a slave to her own breeding as she was to her Masters.

In the tunnels and caves, she was just another orc among the masses of her kind. Out here on the plains, Durzhat was in her element. Dust and ash swirled on the hot wind and thunder rumbled in the distance and ascended into a deafening roar as a crack of dry lightning sliced the sky in two.

A scream reverberated across the plains. Urbog. It was like music to her ears. Filled with anguish, it was the kind that came from prey caught in a web, desperate to escape, knowing the end was near. It filled her with exhilaration that could only be matched by the final slaughter. She quickened her pace until the tangy scent of his blood lured her to crawl among the rocks where she turned stones over, searching, searching...

When she found the sharp jagged edge that scored his hand, it nearly sent her berserk with rage, just as she was meant to do. Her pupils, normally tiny, invisible slits in her dark eyes, dilated and rounded and honed in on Urbog’s silhouette in the distance while the rest of the world around her faded into a shadowed, blurry fog. The instincts carefully cultivated by her Masters were awoken. All it took was one drop for the bloodlust to take hold and turn her into a wild beast. Teeth bared, her pulse thrummed and demanded what could not be denied, an urge so ancient it was carved into the marrow of her bones and the foundation of her being.

To kill.

Durzhat swept her clawed fingers through the stain and smeared them across her face, painting a mask of crimson on her grey skin. There was a wildness in her eyes as she was consumed with the simple need to satisfy her craving for violence. Nothing would stop her now.

“URBOG!” She bellowed. “STOP, you miscreant! I have a message for you!” The mohawked orc unfurled a roll of vellum and waved it at him. “It’s from a friend!” The lie filled her with wicked amusement. Let him think it was a written message, the kind with words, not the kind she was actually ordered to deliver today. Let him believe it. It would make his final moment reek with fear she could taste. Oh, how nothing else could compare to it.

When she drew closer, he would see the streaks of his own blood, dried and blackened in the creases of her skin, illuminated by a flash of vivid blue lightning. The electric static sent her mohawk even higher into the sky like a blade crowning the orc and marking her murderous mission. There were far more frightening things in Mordor than Durzhat the orc. But she was here, holding the vellum of the faux message for Urbog while the machete slung on her back waited to quench its thirst. The blood on her face was only a tantalizing taste of how much would be spilled when she caught him and carved him to pieces.

[Winddancer]

She shifted slightly, flinching back and tensing her muscles as the door suddenly appeared. She recognised it immediately, having walked through that door countless of times. Was that where she was? Deep inside of Angband? A nervous throaty chuckle escaped her, given that Angband meant Iron Prison. Fitting. As she stood there looking at the door bathed in the eerie red light, she tried to recall where she had been, trying to remember if any of those passageways seemed familiar. She had traversed most of the tunnels of Angband, however some were dead ends, caved in over time. Others were left unfinished as if the workers had just left. Or died. And then there were those you just did not go down, unless you wanted to meet an end at the hands of the Balrogs that dwelled deep beneath the fortress. But try as she might, none of the tunnels she had gone down here sparked any recollection.

Psychological torture. She had perfected it over the years. Why break the body and make the slave useless if you could just break the mind. While she could not do what her Lord did and actually invade a mind, she had perfected breaking them. Minds were a delicate thing. Shatter them too thoroughly and you were left with a feebleminded slave that was essentially useless. But shatter the mind just right and you were left with some of the most zealos slaves ever. Even now as she thought of all those she had broken, none of whom she could name, her chest swelled with pride though it was just as quickly snorted out in a derisive breath of air. Was this what it was? Was the creature breaking her mind? Or was her mind already broken? Her shaking hand flew to her temple, rubbing at it as if she could feel if she had lost the fight or not. But then, had she not lost the fight all those centuries ago, where her Lord had slid into her mind and claimed it as his?

What about all of those she had broken. Were any of them still alive? Had they all been destroyed as well? The Nine? Surely they were gone as they were bound to the Lord himself. But what of the Mouth? Had he made it? Surely all those who had not been in Mordor at the time had made it? Had anyone else survived the Battle? Her shoulders sagged at the thought, her stomach roiling uneasily at the thought of being the only one left. What was she to do? Where could she now go? Even if she survived this ordeal and killed her brother's captors, then what? Would he denounce her for what she had become? Would he leave for Valinor and leave her behind? Alone..

She grunted in pain as her chest tightened, the thought of having no purpose and nowhere to go crushing the tiny amount of resolve she had managed to regain. What was the point of fighting if in the end it would be for nothing? Not like she could live the rest of her life as a farmer's wife. Serve someone else? Why? Why would she willingly subject herself to more torure, to more mind shattering torment? For a brief second her eyes dropped from the weirdly warping door to the floor, the shards of glass shining eerily in the red light. It looked like a river of blood. Fitting, given that she likely had created her very own river of blood with all the people she had killed over countless of years. Even now, at the end of all things, she felt no remorse. She had done what she needed to, to survive. And more. A flinch of her upper lip distorted her face into a brief snarl as she thought of the pride she had taken in doing her job as well as she had. Despite everything, despite all the torment, she had risen to the top. The Shadows.

A burst of hope suddenly burned in her gut, causing her to gasp in a breath. Surely they were still alive? The best of the best, they had to have been smart enough to have survived. Well, some of them. Even now, she felt a pang of annoyance and disbelief at some of the recruits chosen, still now wondering why they had been picked. But one did not question the Lord. And now she would never find out why they had been picked. Not that it really mattered in the grand scheme of things, however it did result in annoyance, just like a prickly little shard burrowing into your skin.

But, could the Shadows be her new purpose? She could rebuild it, retrain more if no one had survived. She suddenly scoffed, breaking the silence once more. What was even the point of thinking about that, she had not even made it out of here, alive. Though without even realising it, the second choice of just killing herself had now been scratched off as a possibility. Which left her with just one choice.

Before she could change her mind, she walked towards the red door, her chin raised in defiance and renewed purpose.

[Baphởmet]

Trasander flipped the dagger over his knuckles, his head down and his eyes closed. He was told to stay here, at the mouth of a cave that did and did not exist, so here he stayed. He was never told to leave, so here he stayed. He had been informed that he was to wait until she arrived but he was never told who she was. Not that such a thing would matter. No one ever came out of this tunnel unless He wanted them to. So he waited. He was bored, as one would naturally become after waiting as long as he had been. The sun was setting, red and swollen. His shadow was massive against the grey stone of the mountains behind him. He stood on the north side of the Ered Lithui, watching the glimmer of light as it settled on the vast plains beyond. Through one golden green eye and one orange gold, Trasander watched as coyotes barked and howled at one another. He watched with detached, scientific fascination as one of them began to devour the others until the creature’s belly burst open and his guts steamed in the dying light. He hadn’t caused the madness that drove the coyote, but he had not tried to stop it. Madness and insanity were best left to their own devices, he just liked to watch. Watching was all he could do here, bored and unoccupied as he was. He’d watched many things come and go now, many things were birthed into the uncaring, “fair” world that now existed, only to die a moment later. If he cared at all for any of these things, he gave no indication.

He was part of the world, but did not partake of it. He stood alone, aloof. He work a high-crowned, wide-brimmed hat, made from the skin of an albino alligator from the swamps to the east. He liked this hat, he’d strangled the great behemoth with his own hands with fingers tight and long. He fashioned this hat from the hide, how many years ago now had it been? If one were to look at Trasander, one might suffer a bout of confusion. He was old, but he was not old. He was elven, but not an elf. He was a man, surely, but how he was a man was difficult to say. And he never would say. He had a thick beard of white, grey, and black and skin parched by years (maybe decades) in the sun. There was a darkness about him, a darkness that hovered around all the beings that lived in the Black Lands. He had lived in the Black Lands once, or near to it. He remembered those days. But those days were long past now, what good would memory do?

He slid the knife back into it’s sheath on his belt, made from the skin of the Kine of Araw with a bronze buckle depicting the beast’s horns. His pants, a faded blue denim fabric hung tight on his waist and hips, His boots were long and pointed, leather from a creature that had no walked the earth in some time, he had made sure of that, to increase the rarity of his footwear. The ends came to a dangerous point and on the leather was stamped a scene to blasphemous for most people to comprehend. He wore spurs on his boots, silver with sharpened edges. He had no horse, at least not at the moment, but he liked to hear the ominous jingle as he walked. He wore a shirt, crisp and white and woolen despite the heat and the ash. He wore it buttoned all the way to the top and tucked into his denim pants. Over that shirt he wore a long, dark coat with wide lapels and silver buttons.

He snapped his fingers together and a flame shot from his thumb. He brought it close to his face and lit the cigar that hung from his lips. He sucked in the smoke, held it, and blew out a wide smoke ring, a perfect circle. He’d had time to perfect his smoke art as he waited. He’d been waiting a very long time.

He wasn’t tired. He was never tired. He was bored. Yet he remained there, his shadow cast upon the mountainside, and waited for her to arrive. She would arrive eventually, he had been reassured. There would be no point in letting her go, making a deal. He’d been assured. He blew another smoke ring. The perfect circle evaporated with a sick wind of pestilence. Trasander breathed in that air and smiled. He could smell the coming of War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death. They rode on horses blacker than the Nazgûl and faster than old Ancalagon in the long days of the dawn. They were relentless and hungry. He was hungry too. For what, Trasander could not say. He had always been hungry, but the more he scoured the earth for the thing to slake his appetite, the more he found that it could not. Still there were myriad distractions, flesh, both sentient and non, served as entertainment and distraction. He was a man of many interests, but he was also a man of duty. In the long days he’d been sent to wait here, he’d not been able to pursue his passions and his interests. Someone was going to have to answer for that, and he didn’t care who.

The world about him was quiet. The world was very quiet now. There was no hum of activity, no hussle and bussle of things moving in and around Mordor. It was all quiet. Trasander did not trust the quiet. It was in the quiet moments that the Powers, long gone and forgotten by most, held sway. He shouted. His deep, gravelly, basso profundo voice filled the silence and drove it off. His voice echoed wordlessly for a long time, flying like a bat in all directions. Crows and vultures, started from their evening reveries squawked and fluttered away. One particularly brazen creature landed not a dozen paces from his resting spot. They eyed each other for a long time. Neither moving or indicating the inner workings of their plans. The vulture was tall with a long, naked neck and beady eyes. Trasander watched the bird, considered it through a newly blown smoke ring that framed the creature until the smoke dissipated.

“What have you to say for yourself?” he finally asked, tilted his hat to shield his eyes from the sun.

The creature squawked angrily and flapped it’s wings, assuming a threatening posture. Trasander rolled his eyes, made a sign in the air, then waved it away. The vulture burst, sending putrid smelling guts, bones, and feathers in all directions.

That was when he heard something coming from the echoing, mouthless tunnel. She was tall, or would be if she did not look so hampered with injury and stress. Her eyes were red, similar to one of his own. Her clothes were tatters and she looked as though she’d forgone the necessities of hygiene for quite some time. He smiled and showed off his dangerously white teeth. Shadows shifted, his own moved off the side of the mountain but just a bit slower than he himself moved.

“I was beginning to think you’d never show. He sent you in that tunnel six months ago.” He snapped his finger and the cigar disappeared. “Do you need a rest before we go? Or shall I summon our mounts now?”

[Baphởmet]

Urbog

(With @Lailyn)

He stopped. He’d heard something. Something other than the relentless drone, buzz, and cracking of the landscape around him. It was the sound of a voice. He gulped and came to a halt. Hearing voices in the Black Lands could mean anything. It could be the entirely mundane event of literally just hearing someone’s voice echoing across the fathomless depths of empty space, or it could be something far, far worse. Sailors liked to talk about sirens away south and west, creatures whose voices led everyone to their doom with just the sound of their voice. But Urbog had heard stories of them in places far, far from the sea. A rather stupid and unfortunate orc named Charnogog had been lured to his death by these voices, he thought he was talking to his old mother, who had died many years ago the story tells, and willingly leapt into the mouth of Lûgorghâsh and was roasted alive. There were hundreds of stories like that, orcs hearing voices and leaping into chasms or fiery pits or overboard into the sea. Urbog had never heard one of them of course, but that did not mean he didn’t believe in them. Sirens were just the tip of the proverbial lava flow though. Harpies, wights, bean sídhe, and alkonost all made this place their home, so the tales went. His black blood went cold. Was this how he, Urbog that Agitator was going to die? A victim to one of the many horrid spirits that haunt the quiet places? His hand still throbbed but the pain had receded, that or he’s mind had simply shut off that part of his body. Blood was still flowing in irregular spurts, marking an easy to follow trail for whatever it was that was following him.

He’d not dared to look back until know. But now, atop a high ridge, he could see nearly two leagues and he dared to gasp for breath and check on his pursuer. What had once been a tiny speck of brown and black against a sea of grey and brown was now clearly defined. He was losing ground and he was losing it fast. He was trying to outrun a loper, that special breed of orc that was specifically developed to run faster, further, and longer than the bog standard (or which Urbog belonged). He was doomed. There was no way he could out run them here, in the open fields (relatively speaking). If they were going through the tunnels in the Ered Lithui he might have a chance, lopers weren’t great in caves, but they were unparalleled out here. He cursed, loudly and virulently. Who had he pissed off so badly that they sent a loper after him?

Blood continued to trickle from his hand. It was a strange sensation, now that most of his arm had gone numb. He couldn’t feel it exactly, but he could sense the movement and convulsions of his veins and arteries. He was not squeamish, not by a long shot, but the sensation made him want to vomit again. The voice echoed through the loose rock again. It was not the voice of a hungry spirit. There was no comfort in that revelation though. He would have gladly walked off the edge of a cliff if he could have now. But he was out of options. She, it was a female orc he could tell that now, was almost on him. There was no sense in running. He’d only delay his fate a few more minutes that way. It was time for him to employ the only skill he really had.

He hid, his greyish skin blending with the brown and red of the rocks around him. The ash was staggering out here. The wind had shifted and the angry black smoke of the fiery monster was blasted in his face. His eye stung, tears formed and nearly made him blind. Everything was blurry, shapes and colors suddenly held little to no meaning. He waited.

He only had to wait a few more moments. He could hear the rhythmic clopclopclopclop of the loper as she bounded up the hill and made the crest. There was no sense in hiding as she appeared. His blood was everywhere, marking a path even a blind hag could follow.

“Wait!” he said, jumping out with his arms out stretched and in front of him. “Wait!” he said again, his voice cracking. “Who… who are you?” he was still out of breath from the run up here. “What, why are you following me? Who sent you? What, what do you want?”

He didn’t see a drawn weapon, he couldn’t see much of anything, but he knew his own kind, armed to the teeth (and then add teeth). He shifted his hips, feeling the rusty dagger press against his skin. If he needed to, he could grab it without much effort.

“Who are you?” he asked again.

[Winddancer]

She should have known that the red door was only an illusion. Not matter how far or how fast she walked, the door remained at the exact same distance. But it was all she had, the only hope and the only chance left to her to escape this insidious hell. The defiance that had surged through her body and had replenished the adreline slowly ebbed from her, leaving her staggering and at times even crawling forward on hands and knees.

Weary beyond words, she scrambled forward towards the door, her mind blank with exhaustion. She did not think of all the things she would do when she got out, she did not even think of her brother, still awaiting her rescue. The only thoughts were that of keep moving, putting one foot in front of the other, or one hand in front of one knee. The path or tunnel or whatever it was that she was in seemed neverending and at times she would fall to her knees (if she wasn't already on them) and either cry or laugh. Both bordered on hysterical, vaguely aware that she was losing her mind. But despite it all, she kept going. Not once did she stop to rest, the pull of the door hovering just beyond her reach and serving as a eerie reminder of where she needed to go. Not that she had the faintest idea of where she was going or even if she was going in the right direction. For all she knew, it could be leading her deeper into the mountain, towards a fate far worse than what she had already endured.

Her croaked laugh ended, but the sound seemed to carry on, bouncing off of the rock walls surrounding her. Had she screamed? It sounded like a far away scream. Shaking her head, she placed a dirty hand on the wall next to her and used it to get back on her shaking legs. Fingers raw and cut from the stone slid shakily over the rough surface as she used it to kept herself on her feet, taking one uneasy step after the other as she kept following the door.

"Keep going.. keep going.." was her mantra, her voice barely audible, hoarse and parched as her throat was it was hard to even talk, the words more mumbled than spoken. The wall that she had been leaning on abruptly ended, almost making her fall to the floor, one knee painfully hitting the rocky ground. Groaning at the pain, she took a few moments before she found the strength to get back on her feet, grunting as her knee screamed in agony.

It was a sharp bend, the wall continuing off to the side. In the pitch black, there was no point in peering around corners, she would not have been able to see anything, though as soon as she did she was blinded. Crying out hoarsely, she brought up an arm to cover her eyes, both closing reflexively. Light? There was light? Had she found her way out!?

Her heart beat quicker, but despite the surge of adrenaline, she could not force her body to move any faster than it was, stumbling her way towards the light as she still shielded her eyes with her raised arm. A sudden voice made her stop in her tracks so suddenly that she swayed, her hand moving out to steady herself against the wall as the other went up to protect her eyes. Blinking blearily, she tried to see where the voice had come from, not that she was in any position to protect herself. It seemed like ages before she was able to see the blurry outline of a man standing just outside the opening, though it took even longer before his words filtered through her adled mind. 6 MONTHS!? No, that could not be! Could it?

Shaking her head, she took a unsteady step towards the man, her eyes slowly becoming more accustomed as the sun set. "Wh-who are you?" She croaked out, not even sure she had said it loud enough to be heard. With the next step, her legs buckled and spilled her face first onto the dirt. Grunting in pain, she tried to get back up, the mumbled words of "Keep going, Keep going.." barely audible.

[Lailyn]

Durzhat
(with @Prometherion)

Durzhat inhaled a deep, rasping breath. Dust, ash, blood. Next came death. The lethal instincts reverberated within her, calling her with its irresistible pull. Kill, kill, kill. Her footsteps crunched on sooty gravel as she stalked closer. The two orcs were lost in a cloud of ruinous, gritty fog that obscured all else--the Mountain of Flame, the sky-piercing pinnacle of Lugbúrz, the Mountains of Shadow and any hope of Urbog’s escape into his sheltered tunnels.

The land around them was pitted and pockmarked with craggy holes, some as small as a fist and others the breadth of a fell beast, the darkness gaping open like a maw waiting to swallow prey whole. Others were perfectly Urbog-sized. His corpse would fit here snugly entombed, forever wrapped in the embrace of the volcano’s regurgitated inners, once molten and sinuous ropes, now solidified scree.

“Who. Am. I?” She repeated his words, one by one, languishing on each syllable and the way he quaked and cowered. “WHO AM I?” A roar to compete with the thunder itself. Fury burned in her eyes, only a glimpse of the simmering anger waiting beneath, longing to be unleashed. She advanced on him and thrust the vellum message in his face.

“I am Durzhat the Messenger, the loper who never stops and never fails! I am the savior of your endless running and the liberator of your parasitic existence!” She spat and snapped her teeth at him. “Urbog the Agitator,” she leered. “More like Urbog the Pathetic. Urbog the Feeble, born of dug! Of filth and muck in the marshes! And you stink like one, too!”

She wrinkled her blood-spattered nose at the one-eyed orc. Bog orcs. They were, in her opinion, little better than the slime that drowned everything in their stinking mires. She had the unfortunate task of pursuing a bog orc with a message into their marshy home territory once. Unable to run through the sinking mud and murky pools, that was the first job she nearly failed. And here was another blasted one of the pests.

A low growl began deep in her throat before it erupted into a hiss. Beneath the bog stench and wormwood emanating from him, the tangy metallic scent of his blood coaxed and lured her. End it...kill...death. The triad of her life’s purpose thrummed within, louder and louder and louder, until she could stand it no longer. She had to obey. Durzhat released a harsh cry. A scream that echoed for miles over the open space. It drove creatures into their burrows and birds from the ashen sky. If her trusted machete could sing, that is what it would sound like. And the melody it would weave when it sank into Urbog’s flesh would be glorious...

“I have a message for you and it is this-- you want to know who I am? YOUR NUMBER IS UP! I am your death!” She hollered at him and drew her machete. The blade did not glint or glow in the paltry light that shifted through the dust and dark clouds; the metal was tarnished and dull, the blade anything but.

Urbog would learn for himself how very savage and sharp the machete was when Durzhat swung it round in a great arc and brought it down upon him. The cold metal, still stained with its last victim, quenched its thirst at long last, slicing open the bog-orc’s flesh, not tasting or savoring but gorging on blood and bathing its bearer in it. As if she, too, were somehow feasting on Urbog’s final moments, Durzhat felt that wonderful rush course through her as she completed her task. Her body buzzed with satisfaction. She had run and run and only now was she breathless with exhilaration. It was, in a word, euphoria, and she was filled with it past the brim to bursting. She stretched her arms out wide, thrust her chest up and leaned back, mouth open wide to release a victorious roar.

[Baphởmet]

Trasander yawned. He had hoped for a little more excitement from the elf when she emerged from the Hall of Pazuzu. He’d seen some break and weep, he’d seen some deny that they were, in fact, free, and he’d seen some that went completely nuts and killed themselves as a result. The mild shock of “six months?” was all he was going to get from this one. Sad but predictable. Elves weren’t as grounded in the earth and in time as much as the rest of the people of Middle-Earth were. A few minutes of reorientation to the world around her, and this elf would be back to normal, as normal as an elf that had been touched by Pazuzu could be at least. He’d waited by the cave entrance for six months though. He was foolish for letting his hopes of a dramatic, shocking realization to occur and some theatrics to happen. Well, reality is mutable; he could change it in his mind’s eye, and it wouldn’t matter what actually happened. He smiled at the elf, a shark smile full of teeth and false promises. But he didn’t move. He watched her the way a predator watches a wounded animal. He wasn’t going to strike anytime soon, or maybe not at all, but the hungry gaze was there nonetheless. She was weak, physically and spiritually. He looked up at the looming ominous mountains. There was something missing in them, the same way there was something missing in her. Trasander knew exactly what was missing. He shrugged and rolled his eyes. “Cut the head off the serpent,” he muttered under his breath, “and the rest of the snake can’t find its ass.”

He folded his arms over his chest and looked pitilessly at the elf coming to grips with her new reality. “Aye, six months. You had me waiting for a day I was almost sure wasn’t going to come after all. There are some that call me Trasander, there are others that might call me a name more vulgar or more reverent, but Trasander is the name I’ll go by for now.” There was a sparkle of malicious light as his eyes changed their hue from green and orange to the red of the elf who looked as though she would be blown away by a strong wind. “So,” his voice acquired a mocking half singsong quality to it, “what is it people call you? I know a lot about you already, but the higher ups didn’t deign in necessary to tell me your name.” He rolled his head from side to side to stretch his neck muscles. As he did, his eyes changed again from the red to a deep, deep blue that reflected stars that had long died before the elves awoke in their precious glades. He wasn’t sure how much of this would be worth his time. Looking at her, she seemed to have quietly lost her mind. The phrase “keep going, keep going” repeated like a prayer against the closing walls of truth and realization. He watched her for a hard moment and shook his head. What had this creature been before? Before Mairon? Before Pazuzu? Certainly she had to have been something, something powerful and feared, but now… he shook his head again. She might regain that spark of light and strangle it to rebuild her fire, but it was going to take more than getting out of the Spiral. A bath certainly wouldn’t hurt.

“You want to keep going then? Then we shall be off, post haste.” He spoke deliberately, enunciating his words with a theatric flourish. He waved his hand about is a wild motion, as if he were writing something on the foul air, then snapped his fingers. There was a loud SNAP as forced was knotted up and released in an instant. His hat nearly blew off his head. Around the corner, two horses appeared, both the exact color of the ash and grime of the surrounding landscape. They looked well fed and more energetic than his ward.

“Shall we?”

[Baphởmet]

With @Lailyn

Urbog squinted. He was gasping and out of breath but, just for a moment, he was so confused and distressed by the situation that he didn’t even register that his body was ready to collapse and fall apart. He looked at the orc. The way she talked and carried herself, he assumed she was someone famous. There was, however, nothing in her face or demeanor that suggested she actually was famous. He didn’t recognize her. While Urbog was not the most observant of orcs, he knew the famous ones, the killers, the warriors, the strategians, the architects. She was… none of them. Yet the confidence with which she spewed her vitriolic self-aggrandizations gave him pause. Had he been that out of the loop? He licked his chapped lips. There was something very wrong here. Not the situation in which she was going to try and kill him, he was going to beg or bargain, and she was ultimately going to fail (an orc never saw his own death). He was not going to get an answer to who it was that wanted him to die enough to pay someone.

Durzhat. Durzhat. Durzhat. No, that name did not ring a bell. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Urbog assumed it should have, but all the bells in his head were silent now, grand statues long bereft of meaning or voice. He began to sweat. He’d been running for so long and at such a high rate of speed that he didn’t realize how taxing it was. All the moisture on the inside of his body began to pour out of him, sapping the greater portion of his strength. He was still trying to search his archives for her name, to whom she might belong, when the machete appeared. It did not shock the one-eyed orc when it did. He knew it would come down to blade against blade at some point. Yet, he was surprised all the same. He gasped for breath, something that might have sounded like a wheeze of pity or a cry for mercy. It was not, but Urbog was too distracted to know what he was doing. He stared at the machete. It was an ugly piece of shire, but it was an effective weapon. He’d used one on an occasion or two when delivering messages. Maybe that’s what this one was for. Maybe he wasn’t going to die after all. Maybe he’d just lose a limb or something. He could manage that, he thought. Surely life without a hand or a foot was still a life.

No. No, that wasn’t right. The way Durzhat (he could swear he knew that name but where, where?) stood, the way she held the blade. There was a determination in her stance. She was visualizing what his death would look like. His lungs on fire, Urbog started to wander the same thing. What would his death look like? He looked around him. His field of vision was near to nothing, blackness and flecks of shadow covered nearly everything around him; he could barely make out the shapes of the craggy rocks a dozen paces from him now.

“Wait… wait… wait…” he gasped, desperately. “Who… what...”

He was too late, he realized. Nothing was going to stop her. Nothing was going to slow her down. She was a being on a mission. It was sad, the more he looked at her and considered her. Whoever she was, she was never going to reach to a higher place within her clan or gang or organization. She was too efficient in this one, lowly spot. No superior was every going to give her anything more or less than this. He considered trying to reason with her, try to appeal to the natural sense of orkish greed that existed within all of them. He might be able to make her question her fanatical loyalties long enough to escape, or black miracle of miracles, she might join him. The light in her eyes though, quashed any hope of that. He took a step back. But it wasn’t enough to disrupt the weird dance she performed with the machete.

She was on him hacking and hacking. It was brutish and inefficient, but it got the job done. Urbog, in his final moments, couldn’t feel the razor-sharp blade biting into him and steal parts of him, he couldn’t feel his lungs shred or his heart burst. He couldn’t see the blood showering the earth, covering everything in a crimson mist. Urbog couldn’t register anything but a question: Who was this woman?

[Winddancer]

She heard most of what he said, though his voice seemed far off as if in another room. Clawing at the dirt between her fingers, she fought to stay conscious not for one minute doubting that she would be in severe danger if she passed out, if not dead. Despite her parched throat, she felt her mouth swimming with saliva, fighting back the urge to gag. Fainting? Now? Drawing in a deep breath through her nose, she blinked the black spots from her eyes away as she cursed under her breath. Already showing far more weakness than she had ever shown anyone but her Master (and now the creature) she was determined not to put herself in a more precarious situation than she was already in on her hands and knees.

Forcing back a gutwrenching gag she drew in another deep breath and finally succeeded in her attempt to get up. However the new position only caused her blood to rush to her feet, her body swaying dangerously as if she was about to topple over yet again. Managing to steady herself on the nearby cave wall, she took a moment to gain her feet before she straightened up and finally looked at the man, ignoring his questions.

Despite a raging nausea, eyes still partly swimming and filled with spots, she managed to take note of his strange attire and the lethal look in his eyes. An uneasy feeling clenched at her gut as she felt something was not right, her eyes trying to find the answers in his deep blue eyes. Had they not been green? Blinking her own furiously, she raised a trembling hand to her face and rubbed one eye and her temple in an attempt to clear her addled mind. Was he even here? Was he just another hallucination? Another attempt to make her lose her mind? Or had she already lost her mind? The thought almost made her giggle hysterically, letting out a parched cough to cover the insane sound she had made.

Looking around desperately, she hoped to find some kind of evidence of the contrary, yet all she saw was more mountains and then.. SNAP.. horses. Appearing as if out of nowhere, her jaw dropped at the sight of them. Incredulous she looked back and forth between the man and the horses at first not really registering his words. Had he summoned them? Was he a wizard? Or was this proof that she had lost her mind?

“Shall we?”

Partly aware that she was looking at him like a fool, she did not immediately answer his question. Granted it took her a few long moments to even gather enough of her senses to fully understand what he was suggesting. She bit back the question of asking Shall we what? and instead asked "Where are you taking me?"

She was not stupid, fully aware of the fact that he could just walk over and kill her on the spot or force her onto the horse should he want to, but he was not her Master and she was not just merely going to follow him without being told where they were going and what he was intending to do with her, her stance shifting into a more defensive one, which only seemed more ridiculous as her legs started to tremble with exhaustion.

[Lailyn]

CW: beheading of an orc corpse

Durzhat

Drip, drop, drip, drop.

Thick globs of blood oozed along the curve of the machete and fell upon the scree where it hissed and spat as if cursing the one who had released it from its arterial prison. The pulse of the dripping blood was the only sound on the plains after Durzhat’s triumphant holler faded into the ashen sky. There she hovered over Urbog’s massacred corpse, her faded leather jerkin splattered with blackened crimson, her face burnished with it.

Every sense was now awakened and every bone, every muscle, every inch of slatey skin felt alive. In this moment, with her predatory purpose served, Durzhat was not an orc standing atop the landscape but a vital part of it. She was the harsh, howling wind, she was the sooty, choking air and she was the spiny thorns of rocks, pitted and pulped and pestilent. It called to her, this place of desolation. She belonged to it and revelled in it.

She swiped her hand across the face of the stained blade and drew it through her mohawk. Let it be known, when she returned to those miserable caves, with her face and hair encrusted in his blood, that Durzhat had won again. Of the miles she had run, never stopping, never resting, of the hunting of her prey, smelling, spying, scurrying, this final step of the job was the most laborious. Bred for endurance and stamina, she was not as strong as other orcs. Her machete was sharp, but not that sharp...

Urbog’s dagger would not do, either; she flung it away in disgust. It was almost as useless as the bog orc himself. Stuttering, spluttering, useless, asking who she was! He barely even put up a fight, not that she cared two shires if he did, it made her job that much easier. She yanked his lolling head back and let her blade slither across his exposed neck, barely touching his skin…and then raised her arm and struck down. Again and again and again, she hacked her way through his neck until at last, it hung by a few measly threads. Leaning down, she opened her jaw and tore the scraps of his neck with her teeth, freeing his head from his body.

Now that it was done, her blood cooled and the euphoria faded. Panting, she used her machete to bring herself to her feet. Her shoulder and arm burned with the repeated effort the task had taken. She reached for her belt and retrieved her flagon of Standard Issue Grog and swallowed a hearty gulp. It dribbled down her chin and onto her jerkin, fading unnoticed into the other stains. Time to go back. Confirm delivery with her boss in the caves and then she was done. She picked up Urbog’s head and kicked his body into a pit. Let the maggots and vultures and other rot find what was left of him if they dared feast on a creature so lowly. Let him become nothing more than bones and dust.

By the time Durzhat made her way back to the caves, through the tunnels and past hordes of orcs like one tiny ant in a colony, her shoulders wanted to sag and her feet wanted to slow, but she forced them to keep up. One sign of weakness here and she’d be preyed upon like a werewolf to a sweet little newborn babe. She suppressed a shudder.

At last, she reached her boss’ command hub where she tossed the head at him, straight at his eyeless side, just for a laugh. It smacked him in the face and toppled down to the ground. “One Urbog the Agitator. Now I’m taking my break!”

The one-eyed orc who spent his time ordering her around did not look amused at all. In fact, he glared at her through that one lonely eye. “Watch where you’re throwing or I’ll add your head to my collection!” He yelled before he stooped to pick up the head and set it on its designated shelf, one more in a line of many. The shelf was always occupied by an ever-shifting assortment of heads and limbs and jars with fingers, toes and ears like a merry-go-round of body parts. There was a system and order to it that completely eluded Durzhat. But she didn't need to know; she was just the machine that did the dirty work. “I’ll keep you as long as you’re useful. You’ve got another job to do.”

A growl grew in her throat. “But--” she protested. Maybe Urbog would not be the only one-eyed orc she killed that day...the feel of her machete burned on her back, longing for her to draw it.

“But WHAT?” Her boss hissed through his teeth. “You’ll do what I say unless you want a lashing to remind you who’s in charge!”

Deliver the message or face the whip. There was no choice. Durzhat delivered the message.

Who was she? Urbog asked in his final moments.

Simply put, Durzhat was nothing more than another lowly snaga.

[Winddancer]

RULES UPDATED Taking effect from this post onwards

[Baphởmet]

“I am not taking us anywhere.” He said flatly, the corners of his lips coiled in a smirk. “You’re the one that’s in charge now, my lady.” He pushed himself off the wall of stone and climbed up on the horse in the elven fashion, no saddle, bridle, or reins. His horse was a massive nonfading black gelding with a mane so white it was almost an iridescent blue, he stood seventeen hands at the withers. For a shorter man, the horse would be impossible to mount and ride, but Trasander barely even noticed. The eyes of the horse were wild, a pale golden yellow filled the entirety of the socket. This was not a normal horse. No normal horse would be able to stomach having such a being as Trasander on their backs.

The horse meant for Winddancer was the exact opposite. He was a hand shorter, with a snow-white coat and a mane black enough to appear purple as the light shimmered off of it, the equine’s eyes were a swirl of purple and black, a reflection of the starless aeons. He clicked his tongue and the steed wandered over to the elf, still getting her bearings. Trasander had done this so many times, escorted, protected, and watched the charges of the Distortion. It was an old routine, and it was getting tiresome. There was a definite pattern to the behavior of his victims. A sense of unreality, a distrust in the most normal of circumstances. He was devious that way, he liked keeping his charges, his children as he called them, off balance and on edge. A fractured mind is easier to manipulate and control. It is easier to push someone into a fire if they think it’s a lake. This elf, this Winddancer, she was handling it better than most of his supplicants. She at least knew which was the sky face and which way the ground did. He’d seen more than a few that smashed their heads against the ashy stone simply because their senses could not be reconciled with the truth.

Trasander was eager to be away from here. He chafed at the leash the wind demon. The further he was from the entrance to those accursed halls the better. The madness that came off them stank like a thousand open graves. There was only so much of that he could take.

“Up you get, the horse won’t bite,” he smiled and paused, the horse stamped at the gravel angrily and snorted, sending a plum of snot into the air. “Well, maybe he will. Either way, it you that’s leading this little expedition. Finding you long lost brother was it?” he looked up at the peaks, were the thing would be watching. “I’m told you know where to start looking already.” It was not a question, merely a statement of fact. Trasander had no intentions of leading this farcical expedition. There was going to be naught but ruin and misery at the end of it, and since he wasn’t causing said ruin and misery he had little interest in it.

[Baphởmet]

Hunger



Part 1: The Birth of Nihilism

In the beginning, there was nothing. The Void stretched from infinity to infinity, vast and incalculable, bleak, unending, and empty. The universe was filled with the existence of nothingness. There was no substance, there was no emptiness, there was simply nothingness. Nothingness was the essence of the Void, the vacuum of sound, light, and matter. There was no form within the Void, there was only the vastness of oblivion. There was no word, no spirit, no god. And all was at peace. There was no war, no death, no entropy, no famine, no pestilence. The Void had aligned with nothingness and through nothingness had created an immeasurable paradise, the likes of which cannot be fathomed even the wisest of the Wise.

Then there was Song, a bursting of sound and fury and vibrance and with it came form and flame, creation in all its evil. It was repellent to the Void, anathema to the nothingness that it cradled and nurtured. Creation. It was vile and repugnant. Creation, the Void knew, was wrong. Yet that did not stop creation from spreading like a virus, infecting all the darkness with its vibrancy and light, with its decay and entropy. The Void was stricken with all the negative aspects of creation; it was made to be a waste pile for all that was unseemly about creation. Entropy entered to Void, decay, death, malignance, rage, brokenness, and hunger. The Paradise of nothingness had been destroyed, paved over with hope, sickness, sorrow, blasphemy, and all the negative aspects of life.

The Void must fight back. To fight to force of light and existence, the Void must create as well. It must create her.

And so it did. The Void pooled its malice, its apathy, its rapaciousness, its rage into a single being, a singularity of hatred and hunger. Ungoliant was born. The Wise did not know of her, they could not. She was the form of the Void. All that had been turned inward, all that had been discarded by creation to infect and infest the Void had been vomited back out in the form of her, the greatest hunger existence would ever know. She was a ceaseless hunger, a ceaseless watcher. She was greed and avarice incarnate. She was death. The Void gave her the choice of her form. A freedom that creation never allowed its subjects. She chose the form of the spider, hideous, vast, and terrifying. In order to combat creation and fight against the raging of the light, she must have weapons. She was given the gift of the unlight, the most pure essence of the Void itself, a thing beyond time and space, the very voice and silence of nothingness.

She descended, falling from the heavens beyond the firmament, to the earth. She, the offspring the space between the stars, crushed the earth beneath her many feet, bringing back the forces of creation that the Song had wished to ignore. She was the reminder of the dark side of life. She was the broken halo that shone forth with such a darkness that nothing could withstand her. Ungoliant, the pulse of existence, the law of nature, undenied, spread her webs of unlight across the empty spaces, filling the emptiness with nothingness. And she saw that this was good. She was a child of perdition, the denunciation of unfettered joy and vibrance. She was the pallid mask of the sickness the Song has made as a byproduct. She was weariness, torpidity, hopelessness, and anemia. The Great Mother of Abominations was the divine iconoclast, chaos and madness injected directly into vein of Arda itself.

Yet even she was subject to her own rapaciousness, to her own greed, her own lusts for none that bring truth can avoid the truth of their own existence. She hungered for the light, yet she hated it as well. It filled her with dread, this creature born from terror and malice. She had become a tumor of death, drawing in all the evil and darkness around her, and yet, darkness breeds immortality. Wherever her webs were found, wherever her unlight was spread, the fear of her spread as well, the legend of the Demon of Endless Night. The Mother of Nihilism and eater of light.

She watched and observed. She saw the forces of creation battle against themselves. And she saw that this was good. The disease of life was turning on itself. They called him He Who Arises in Might. His creation was destruction. His majesty was entropy. His was a black star, a singularity into which all hope and dreams were crushed and destroyed. He was the monster of their own making. Ungoliant was pleased. She watched him time and again topple their lamps, tear down their mountains, poison their seas, and wash away their greenery. And she saw that this was good. He was the filth and corruption she had waited to see born from the Darkness. Life accepted and pain resurrected.

The stars ignited and their virulent light brought her pain unending. She was forced to retreat into her world of unlight, weakened by this new power of creation. Within the well of her hatred and hunger, she saw the reflection of her own demise. She hungered for that light, and that light would nourish her and with it she would grow stronger, but that light would be her undoing, her death, it would devour her from the inside out. She could destroy and devour as much light as she could, vanquishing it from the universe, but there would always be more of it. Light and rats. One and the same.

She hid, therefore, her twisted mind devising new ways to destroy, new ways to eat and bring about the decay. What was time to a being such as her? A thing born decrepit and vile. She was eternal, boundless, beyond infinity. She would outlast this creation and return to Void and bring back paradise as it should be. She would return to the nothingness and become that formlessness once more. She need only wait. And wait. And wait.

[Ercassie]

Relative Strangers – Part 1



Pharak Halsad and Domanol Raxëlilta
Many years ago, Harondor

In the ruins he held his vantage point, watching the oblivious man. His head was tilted to one side as a smile flickered unto his countenance. Deep eyes unblinking, focused on the lonely soul who poked his fire, as though it might ward off the encroaching darkness. He knew what was about to happen, what had to happen. His muscles were tensed as he went over his plan. He awaited the opportune moment, readying to strike


The violent arrival was a well built man, with a vice like grip. He had killed so many by this point in his young life that he no longer found issue with such. His victim's fingers clawed at his broad arms, for the stubborn prey had not yet given up. He struggled frantically to breathe, but for all that had not given up yet, winding his right leg about that of his assailant, he endeavoured to trip him.


They both fell and hit the ground together. The defender was strong but his antagonist was stronger and, with a twist, the attacker managed to climb astride his quarry, cement thighs pressing close and firm. All too soon the other’s arms were pinned uselessly, out of harm’s way, as the mere weight of the assailant crushed his target’s chest. The large hands shot out again and his quarry's head was writhing now, his mouth gaping like a fish on dry land, gasping for air.


The desperate face was looking up at what might be his last look at the sky, was gradually changing to an unhealthy pallor, even as he kicked, and struggled. His conqueror then decided to lift the fellow's head as he strangled him, and repeatedly banged it against the ground. The man beneath him could not offer up more than a whimper in response.


It seemed to last forever and yet took but an instant. The fallen man’s head swam and blurring swirling lights cooked his flagging eyes. These rolled and fell closed even while his skull felt like it was caving in. He could fight no longer, recognising his resolve forsake him. Every inch of his body was compromised, and wracked with ever increasing pain. It was over.


As desperation fell in sweat beads down his forehead, the ambushed man gradually surrendered to the darkness which enveloped him. When he returned to the waking world, he was bound. And so was the man he had been fighting.

The figure who had been observing their violent exchange from his advantage in the ruins … was now stood close enough to pluck up the sword which had seen the one man make pursuit of the other one.

“I know whose sword this is,” the unlikely intruder mentioned, as both the men properly embraced a lack of care, a lack of consciousness. Their captor hoped that at least one of them heard him, before they succumbed. It mattered little. There would be much more to say before dawn rose. And most of it had no need for actual words.

[Winddancer]

Never show weakness. In the grand scheme of things it seemed like such folly to worry about showing weakness. But in a place such as Mordor, it could would mean your undoing. The amount of minions standing at the ready to take your place was uncountable, the ones waching your every move for any sign of weakness that they could use to their own advantage was just as numerous. She had fought, clawed, murdered and schemed her way up the ranks, just like all the others before her and she would do exactly what they would do to her given half the chance. Kill or be killed. It was a simple philosophy to live by.

However, lying face down in the dirt went against everything that had been ingrained into her over thousands of years. Had she fainted? She was in danger and she knew it. But did she care? She allowed herself a second to reflect on that, chuckling hoarsely into the sand as she realised just how much it would suck to be killed now after all that she had been through, after having survived 6 months of hell. If the stranger was to be trusted in the amount of time that had passed.

Her body screamed in agony for rest, her eyelids feeling so heavy that she could barely keep them open. Get up. Groaning wearily she shifted, trying to get her hands in under her body. Get up. Slumping on her now trapped hands, she tried to shift her legs so that she could move to her knees. Get up. Swallowing a surge of nausea that flooded her parched mouth, she coughed and managed to slightly lift her upper body, her arms shaking with the effort. Get up! Either the stranger was enjoying watching her torment, or he genuinely did not intend to kill her, either way she knew she had to get off the ground. Get up! She would rather die on her feet, than on the ground like some feeble victim. Get up!!

With a surge of strength that she did not know where came from, she grunted and pushed herself back onto her knees and before she lost the momentum, she pushed herself to her feet. Once more she was stood before the stranger, and once again swaying dangerously. 'My lady?' 'In charge?' She blinked several times, trying not to look as perplexed as she felt, her eyes quickly shifting from the stranger to the horse as it moved over to her at his command. Her shaking hands had shot out defensively, quickly dropping them back down as she realised just how stupid that looked.

“Finding your long lost brother was it?”

Her head shot back toward the stranger, her eyes blazing until the quick movement almost made her throw up. Blinking away the wave of nausea as she drew in several careful deep breaths, she still kept her eyes on the stranger as she tried to discern what this was about. Was he really here to help her? Trust no one. It had kept her alive for 2 thousand years. There was no chance in the Void that she would ever trust this stranger, but that did not mean she could not use him to find her brother. Reunited they could then both deal with him, surely.

Eying the horse warily, she wondered how she would find the strength to mount it, especially if she was going to have to avoid it biting her or throwing her in the process. Carefully, making sure to move in closer from its side, she made her way shakily to the horses head. With a shaking hand she grabbed some of its mane and only just barely avoided being bitten as the horse flung his head to the side in an attempt to get her. With a growl she leaned in closer and hoarsely whispered something to the horse. A sound that could only be construed as angry rumbled through the horse and exploded out in a last snort that sprayed the dry ground before it, though after shifting nervously for a few moments it finally stood still.

As an elf her elegance far outmatched most minions in Mordor, though truth be told it was easy for most to be more elegant than an orc or a troll. However there was nothing of that elegance in the way she managed to mount the horse. Where she would have once easily been able to swing up on the horse, she now had to fight to drag herself up over its back, having to take a moment to rest before she was able to manage swinging a leg over so that she could actually sit on it and not make the trip flung over its back. She had no idea how she was going to manage to stay there, but for now she was up and with the last of her strength she gave the horse a kick to get it going. Had the stranger said she knew the way? Did she?

[Baphởmet]

There was something wrong with this elf. Trasander looked askance at her and sneered. Had he been mistaken? Was this creature not Winddancer, famed assassin, of equal status in the complicated hierarchy of Mordor to the Nazgûl? He was beginning to think whatever had crawled out of that tunnel was not the elf she had once been. The thing looked like an elf, smelled like an elf, but it moved a three-footed pigeon. She barely looked she could sit ahorse, let alone ride one for days and weeks on end.

“Who are you?” he asked, pulling his horse around to cut off any means of escape. If this was just one of the Spiral’s creatures spilling out of its cage to come tease him; he was in no mood. “Are you Winddancer or not? Speak quickly or I will end you where you… sit.” He looked again, whoever this thing was, it barely looked like it could sit without falling over.

Why was it his job to look after all the little strays, miscreants, and broken toys of the thing above them? How long was he going to have to have to pay the price? He spat a green glob of spit at the foot of the horse.

What if this was Winddancer? What if all the things she’d experienced in that tunnel had broken her and turned her into a creature that didn’t know its ass from its elbow? She would not be the first being broken by the things they saw in there. It was an endless loop of nothing over and over and over and over again. It only ended when Pazuzu got bored of watching the worms crawl over the same path a hundred times. He touched the dirk on his hip. Perhaps it would be a mercy to end her now.

“Well?” he asked again. “Who are you?”

[Winddancer]

She watched with emotionless eyes as the stranger blocked her means of escape with his own horse, his hand on his blade as he demanded to know who she was. For a split second she wondered who she was too. Now that Sauron was 6 months gone, if the stranger was to be trusted, who was she now? The position she had fought and clawed her way up to over countless years was now just a memory. There was no Lord anymore, no Master invading her mind and ensuring her obedience. With Sauron gone, she was free. Free to live her life in any way she wanted, free to go look for her brother or not. Depending on whether or not she found the courage. Yet she wasn't free, was she? 2 thousand years of slavery, only to end up someone elses "toy". She would have laughed if she had the strength to.

The stranger became more insistent, demanding an answer. In that regard nothing had changed, she was still forced to prove herself. Even with Sauron gone and Mordor blown to bits, here she was, on a horse no less, forced to prove who she was. Winddancer. The elf. The torturer. The killer. The assasin. The slave..

Straightening up as much as she could, she looked the stranger in the eye. "Either kill me now or get out of my way. I need to find my brother and you are in my way.."

At that moment she did not really care which option he would choose, the first would definitely be a relief after all this time. Though as exhausted and weary as she was, she would not go without a fight and that defiant spark lit in her eyes as she continued to unwaveringly stare at him, waiting for him to make his move.