Anariel of Erudin: The Age of Revolution | Lord of the Rings

1. Treasures, Toils, and Trolls

Rocks. Rocks everywhere. I was surrounded by rocks: big rocks, small rocks, some rocks that weren't even rocks at all but were actually large dirt clods. Turin thought he had stepped on a dirt clod once, but it was actually something far less pleasant.

And what did he wipe his dirty foot on? A rock, of course.

If Middle-earth's currency was based on rocks, I would have been the richest woman in the kingdom, but I expected that much from a cave.

Oh, but caves were true places of wonder, where hidden treasures waited to be unearthed and never-before-seen creatures lurked in the darkness. Turin was searching for a few gems of his own, but I was looking for something far more valuable: a cave-troll.

In all my life, I had never actually seen a cave-troll; in fact, I'd been told they no longer existed. One man said they all had just died off once the One Ring was destroyed, but I refused to believe that. In my travels, I had seen many creatures long believed to be extinct, so I still had faith.

Now, I had seen trolls before. Prior to visiting the Misty Mountains, we had spent two years in the Northlands with Elladan and Elrohir. The air was cold, the days were short, and the blistering winds seemed without end, but we traveled through it all, refusing to stop no matter how severe the conditions were.

It was during one of these dangerous treks that I saw something amidst the blowing snow: a great shadow. It was a snow-troll, with thick fur as white as the snow and teeth sharper than icicles. Fierce as the winter winds, it came at us, running on all fours and attacking with dagger-like claws. And no arrows could penetrate its hide. And no sword could cut its flesh. But when the sun rose, its body turned to ice, perfectly preserving the beast's snarling expression in a frozen sculpture.

Turin later attempted to shatter the large block of ice, but the only thing that broke was his sword. According to Elrohir, the boy was too careless with his weapons, and that was true still. With first his sword and then his dagger, Turin chipped away at the cave walls, trying to dig out something that shimmered in the rock. He was convinced it was a jewel of some sort, and so he was knowingly destroying both his blades just to retrieve a tiny sparkle that was no bigger than the tip of my pinky.

"It is just a rock," I said.

"It shines like a diamond," he argued, grunting as he pushed his dagger harder into the stone.

"Then it is a shiny rock, but still a rock."

Finally, the tip of his dagger snapped off. He looked down at the blade with disgust. "Elven steel, they said. Strong enough to withstand anything, they said. It might as well be made of wood."

"It is not meant for mining," I kindly reminded him. "Perhaps you should have asked them to make you a pickaxe instead."

"But what good is a pickaxe against a cave-troll?"

"What good is a dull sword?" I fired back with a smirk, silencing him for just a moment.

He sheathed his broken dagger. "We have spent weeks traveling these mountains, and I have yet to see a cave-troll-or anything, for that matter. Soon, I will have to fight my own shadow for entertainment."

And I wonder who would win, I nearly said, but the words remained locked behind my lips, for when I looked upon the short stump that formed Turin's left arm, I realized that it would have been unkind to say such a thing.

Since losing his arm, Turin's swordsmanship had suffered greatly, and I knew he was sensitive about it. He had the potential to become a great swordsman, Elladan once said, but now it seemed like he had lost much of his fighting spirit. He fought to kill, not to grow stronger, and he did not respect his weapons, not as he once did. The old Turin would have never used his sword as a pickaxe.