Sword and Arrow

Chapter 14

The Fellowship peered into the darkness past the door, but nothing was to be seen. Gandalf nodded and took a small object from his satchel - it looked like a crystal. He placed the crystal into a nook at the top of his staff and gently blew on it, whispering a few words. The crystal came alive, pulsing with a soft, white light. With a look at the Fellowship, the wizard proceeded into the entrance. Legolas and Gimli followed after him, then Boromir, then Beruthiel and the hobbits, and finally Aragorn, who cast a last look at the black water, still not releasing his sword hilt.

The clouds shifted as they entered the great chamber and faint moonlight washed in, giving them more light other than Gandalf's staff. "Soon, Master Elf, you will enjoy the fabled hospitality of the Dwarves!" Gimli was telling Legolas as he walked beside the elf, his footsteps painfully heavy beside the elf's own lightfooted gait. "Roaring fires, malt beer, ripe meat off the bone. This, my friend, is the home of my cousin, Balin."

Legolas slowly nodded, not paying much attention to the dwarf's words. His hand wanted to go back to the knives beside his quiver, to whip one out and flip it into the darkness, at what, he did not know. There was a... presence that dwelled there. A presence that held bad will against them.

"And they call it a mine!" Gimli continued, oblivious to what the sensitive elf was feeling. "A mine!"

"This is no mine," Boromir said sharply, shaking his head. "It's a tomb."

Legolas spotted what Boromir had seen: broken and battered forms strewn across the chamber. Skeletons. Dwarvish skeletons. Gimli set his foot down; bones crunched underneath it. "Oh, no," the dwarf whispered. "No!"

Legolas crouched beside a fallen dwarf and pulled out the arrow that was embedded in the neck bone. He examined the arrowhead and the fletching - it was a style very familiar to him, a style he had seen in Mirkwood many, many times before the Battle of the Five Armies. He fluently swore in the Silvan tongue and cast it down, standing up. "Goblins," he said in disgust, pulling an arrow out of his quiver. He swiftly nocked it to his bow as Beruthiel raised hers and Aragorn and Boromir simultaneously drew their swords.

"We make for the Gap of Rohan," Boromir said, soft and sharp. He glanced around the chamber, the edges of which were still lost to the shadows. "We should never have come here."

The hobbits backed toward the door, already frightened by so much death scattered around them. "Now get out of here," Boromir said in their direction. "Get out!" His voice, usually deep and steady, shifted about an octave higher with fright and panic.

Beruthiel, still keeping the bowstring drawn, backed toward the door after making sure Aragorn was exiting as well. Legolas followed behind her, placing a hand on her shoulder. "Stay alert," he whispered. "We may need your bow yet." She nodded, her attention still focused on the inky depths of the chamber.

It turned out that those were the wrong inky depths to focus on: a thing came out of the black water of the pool and grabbed Frodo's ankle, dragging him back into the water. At the first impression it reminded him of a vine, then an earthworm, or a snake. The tentacle of whatever beast it was pulled him up, dangling him high above the water.

Screams of fright and helplessness came from the hobbits, as they were the only ones to be facing the water. "Strider!" Sam shouted before stepping forward and hacking at the tentacle with his short sword. "Get off him! Wildcat!"

"Aragorn!" Merry called again. He and the other hobbits grabbed Frodo, pulling him backward, trying to release the thing's grip on him.

Aragorn turned in sudden surprise just as the tentacle let go of Frodo, dropping him on the pebbled shore. The tentacle disappeared into the water, and the surface of the pool was quiet.

Then innumerable sinuous tentacles erupted from the water, knocking the other hobbits aside in their attempt to help Frodo. They fastened themselves around the oldest of the hobbits and again began dragging him back into the water.

Legolas pushed Beruthiel aside and ran out onto the shore in four great strides. He shot arrow after arrow, some of which pierced the tentacles holding Frodo, but most of them harmlessly splashed into the water. Panic, emergency, and the uncertain moonlight had reduced his ability to take a precise aim.

Beruthiel stood behind the elf, also shooting, but slower and with more deadly precision. It was said that a Ranger carried the lives of twenty men in his quiver, for that was how many arrows he carried. There were no men to fight here, but Beruthiel did carry the lives of twenty tentacles in her quiver.

Boromir and Aragorn glanced at each other, then rushed at the beast, swinging their swords. They hacked and slashed at the tentacles, some of them dropping to the ground, writhing even after being separated from the body. But despite their efforts, a screaming Frodo was lowered toward the gaping mouth that had opened in the water. It was ringed with rows of razor-sharp teeth that gleamed in the moonlight.

With a grunt of effort, Aragorn sliced through the tentacle holding Frodo into the air. Frodo tumbled down, landing in Boromir's arms, who had thrown his sword out of the way and dived forward to catch him. Boromir set him on his feet, then picked up his sword. He corralled the four hobbits through the doorway just as Gandalf shouted for them to run into the mines.

"Legolas!" Boromir said as Aragorn and Beruthiel rushed past him: Gimli and Gandalf were already in the cavern. Legolas spared him a fleeting glance, then took aim one last time and shot. The arrow hit the beast in its eye, and it emitted a scream that jarred Beruthiel to her bones. It recoiled with another screech as Legolas dashed into the cave.

"Run!" Aragorn was screaming at him, for he still had four meters to go when the tentacles again rose out of the water. Slipping and sliding on the wet rocks, Legolas barely made it to the Fellowship in time. Beruthiel reached out and took him by the forearms and pulled him closer, as far away from the beast as she could, and for once, he didn't mind.

The beast struck out with its tentacles, trying to reach the person who had hurt it so much. But it was blinded by pain and an arrow, and its tentacles smashed against the rocks instead of snaking inside the doorway. Already weakened by Gandalf's spell of shattering, the stone wall above the doorway crumbled underneath the beast's onslaught. Rocks tumbled down, obscuring the doorway, as the Fellowship could do nothing but watch.

As the moonlight filtered away and eventually disappeared, the dust settled and they saw the result of the beast's anger:

The gate had been destroyed, and they were trapped inside the Mines of Moria.

The only exit was a three days' journey to the other side.

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A/N: I know these chapters are getting rather short, but I'm trying to stick to my goal of updating daily (at least on weekdays) and this is probably the only way to do that with the limited time on the computer I am getting.

So... who do you ship, huh?