The Raven | LOTR

prologue

It's finally raining.

There's no need for rain here – nothing ever grows in these cursed lands – but it's a break from the foul stench that hangs over the endless stretches of ash and rock. It's a stink that can be seen, a thick smog that clings to cloaks and tangles in hair. There is no escaping the smoke of Mordor.

Except for when it rains. Even the briefest shower brings something pure to the Black Lands, just for a moment.

Dinah almost smiles when she feels the first cold drop. A storm has been threatening all day – thunder rolling across the dark sky, seeming to rage at the clear blue stretches in the West. Throughout her too-long life, she has seen many lands transformed by nature and time, but there is something so strangely beautiful about rain sizzling across Mordor. It's like stepping into a dream. A hazy, hopeful promise – nothing and nowhere is too far gone.

But then, that's just a dream.

Her legs are aching. She's held this tense crouch behind one of the many rugged boulders outside the gates of Minas Morgul for hours – sometimes she thinks she can hear the individual joints groaning in protest. She's been trying to find her courage, but she's afraid it might've gotten left at the last inn she stayed in, along with her favorite whetstone.

It's easier to be brave when she's with her friends. She doesn't have to think; she just have to move, and they move with her, a dance of death across the rolling plains and jagged mountains of Middle Earth, with no finale in sight. So comes the duty of the cursed daughters of the Nine.

Now there are three of them left to fulfill their mission, to rid the realm of their families' legacies, and to give their fallen sisters peace in their rest. Isn't it cruel, how they can only experience the Gift of Man if they are killed in battle? The Númenóreans feared the End, but she fears never knowing an End.

The rain comes down softly, sweetly. If Liesel were here, she'd probably squeal when the tiny droplets decorated her auburn hair like little wet baubles. Then Sage would harshly tell her to be quiet, and then the shoving would start. Their fathers hardly got along – why should they?

Because we're better than them, Dinah has always said. Because we have to do what they could not. Because it's our duty.

She shivers and forces her groaning knees deeper into the forming mud. Her lips almost touch the dark rock before her as she stares blankly at the ghastly gates, waiting. An odd grey-green glow oozes from the tower, like a beacon in the damp descending dusk.

When night finally falls, the gates will open. The Nazgûl will emerge – hopefully – and she will have to be quick to follow them.

Something sinister is brewing in Mordor. Dinah has known it for years now. She can feel it in her very being, the strange sixth sense she and her sisters were given with the curse. When the Nine are on the move, her gut twists. It will only go away if she paces, and the pacing will only stop when she begins to walk without knowing where her feet are taking her, only trusting that somehow, they know the way.

Liesel and Sage have gotten better at ignoring the signs. Perhaps they see them and don't want to believe them. Ever since the Battle at Angmar, where most of their sisters were slaughtered while fighting the Witch-king, it has been quiet. The Nazgûl have not been sighted for some time now, rarely leaving the confines of the Morgul Vale.

Liesel thinks that peace has finally, truly come to Middle Earth. Sage thinks the ferocity of their fighting has convinced the Nine to go into hiding. Dinah can't give herself the comfort of believing either of those theories, no matter how much she wants to, no matter how much she longs for a simple, human life. If their job was done, the curse would be lifted. Judging by how easily she can hunt despite not having eaten today, she isn't human again. Not yet.