Chapter Text
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Galadriel of the Noldor, Daughter of the Golden House of Finarfin, swore vociferously in the tongues of Elves, Men, Dwarves and even Orcs, as bitter ash coated her nose and entered her mouth for the tenth time in as many minutes.
Several weeks ago, the land beneath her feet had been verdant and green; filled with life, and even hope, after the Numenorean host she’d led had crushed the foes under the Moriondor who called himself Adar.
Galadriel swore softly again as ash coated her eyelashes and she had to stop to delicately clear the acidic flakes from her vision.
The mountain must have erupted once more, for this much ash to still be in the air. It had been weeks since she and – and Halbrand had galloped for Eregion.
She coughed, trying to clear her lungs, as she brought her cloak up to cover more of her face while still attempting to keep the ash out of the links of her chainmail. She stamped her feet, displacing more ash, as she squinted through the grey darkness which had overtaken the Southlands.
Visibility was extremely limited, even for her keen elven eyes, and all around her the land was eerily silent. Death had come to this place, sudden and swift, and left nothing in its wake.
As Galadriel continued to move slowly in a – she hoped – south-eastern direction, ash-covered trees, shorn of their leaves, loomed out at her from the gloom, like skeletons with grasping fingers. The occasional, sickening crunch beneath her boots, told her she’d trod on the bones of some poor, small animal that had failed to escape the pyroclastic flow.
Each step through the unnerving silence and shadow stoked the fire in Galadriel ever higher. Rage, betrayal, and shame churned within her, in a dangerous mixture that threatened to explode out of her as violently as the fires of Orodruin itself.
Halbrand.
The man she had shared her life with, had endured perils on land and sea with, had fought besides as brothers-in-arms…. even bared her soul to, was not a man at all.
He had never been her friend and companion.
He had never been anything at all to her, except her sworn enemy.
Sauron the Deceiver.
Servant of Morgoth.
The very being she had spent centuries of darkness hunting, the murderer of her beloved Finrod, had been right under her nose for months.
And she was the fool who hadn’t seen who, no what, he was until it was too late.
He had tricked her, lied to her, gotten her to speak of her brother to him, and she had been too stupid – too blind and complacent – to see that it was her enemy and not her friend who stood before her.
Galadriel picked up her pace, heedless of the lack of visibility and the very real possibility of orcs. She had a stout elven sword; the very one Glorfindel had used to slay the balrog in the mountains above Gondolin, in fact. She also had one of the new rings Celebrimbor had forged – that he had given Celebrimbor the idea for how to combine the mithril for, the Void take him! – and any Orcs who crossed her path –
Despite being an Elf, Galadriel tripped.
Tumbling head over heels, she landed in a thick pile of ash, a cloud of it rising up to cover her.
She let out a short scream of frustration, furiously wiping at the ash that stung her eyes. They watered fiercely. Holding her breath, as much to not breathe in the ash while she cleared her nose, as to prevent her eyes from watering any further, Galadriel fixed her mind on all the things she planned to do to Sauron when she caught up with him.
Defiantly, she rose from the ash like a mortal tale of a goddess from the sea and continued on her previous course at an undiminished rate of speed.
She did, however, take more care as to where she placed her feet.
Galadriel had a general idea of where she was going and one very specific feeling for where she thought Hal- Sauron would be. She had spent weeks traveling with the man – evil fiend of Morgoth, and further weeks imprisoned with him on the island of Númenor.
Not to mention the centuries she had spent tracking him back and forth across the vastness of Middle Earth.
Denied of his original goal of Eregion and the power of the Elves, Sauron would return to the scene of his next most recent failure – the Southlands.
If he had not shed his current form – and she doubted he could just yet, that his power had not returned enough for him to do so – he would be unable to bear the fires of Orodruin. But she had seen in Armenelos and then again in Eregion, how even as Halbrand, Sauron had gravitated towards a forge.
He had been a smith of Aüle back in Valinor and was held highest in the Valar’s esteem. Mairon, he had been called then, and even as a child, Galadriel had longed to meet him. The Noldor prized craftsmen above all others – scholars, engineers, smiths, and weavers – and Mairon’s work in those blessed days had rivalled even Fëanor’s, and Aüle’s himself.
He had been particularly gifted in crafting swords, and young Galadriel had always longed for a blade of Mairon, though her father would not hear of it.
The Galadriel who had been forged in the brutal wars against Morgoth continued her march over the mountains, squaring her jaw and thrusting the past forcibly aside. Mairon was no more, and Sauron would die spitted on the end of her Elven-forged blade.
She would allow no other outcome. He would retreat to a forge; hoping to build yet another weapon for himself, and she would be there waiting for him.
The best forge in the Southlands was beneath the watchtower at Ostirith. It was unlikely even the tower’s destruction had damaged the forge, and though surrounded by orcs led by Adar, Sauron would head there; Galadriel was certain of it.
Day faded into night and back into day again before Galadriel was at last able to view the watchtower in the distance. Dusk was fast approaching, brought on faster by the clouds that ever covered the Southlands now, but at least the ash had stopped falling for the time being.
Galadriel kept her cloak on, and her bright silver-gold hair covered. It had been many centuries since she’d brought to mind the lessons Melian had taught her in enchanted Doriath. But now, with the power of the mithril-ring, Nenya, humming always at the back of her mind, Galadriel whispered an enchantment of concealment into the cloak. Hopefully it would be enough to get her past the orcs that patrolled these mountains.
Although she was in the mood for a fight, Galadriel wanted that fight to be with Sauron, not some lesser spawn of the Darkness.
There were no stars above her to help guide her way, but between one mountain valley and the next, Galadriel caught sight of the ruined watchtower through the gloom.
At last, she thought.
She hadn’t stopped to rest in days and her body was beginning to tire, but none of that mattered for the end of her quest was in sight.
Ostirith lay in a high mountain pass overlooking the steep drop into the valley below. Just a few weeks ago, this place had been beautiful and teeming with life. Now, the uneasy silence and death which hung over the rest of the Southlands, covered this place as well.
Ash coated the stone fortification. Ash blanketed the ruins of Tir-Harad far below. The only footprints in the drifting, grey mounds were the heavy tread of orcs.
As the gloom of day irrevocably fell into night, Galadriel’s keen ears caught the foul speech of those accursed creatures. Picking up her pace and drawing her sword from its sheath, she sprinted across the still standing, stone bridge and quickly picked her way through debris, rubble and rotting corpses of men and orcs, before reaching the base of the ruined watchtower.
She said a quick prayer to the Valar for the departed souls of the Southlanders as she searched for an opening and kept her breathing calm and unhurried even as the orcs moved closer. The sickly, orange glow of their torches shone on the other side of the bridge.
At last! Galadriel spied a break in the rubble that led to a descending staircase.
Silently, her sword a silver gleam in the darkness, her cloak a mere flutter in the breeze of her passage, she flew down into the darkness.
When she reached the bottom, she gave her eyes a second to adjust before beginning her systematic search. A hallway branched into two separate passageways further down and on either side of this hallway, a series of small, square rooms created darker shadows within the pitch darkness. They were most likely used for storage of non-essential items, food that had to stay cold or extra quarters as needed.
It was damp and cool, as in the shade of a great tree in the heat of high summer, down here. A mist rose up from the waterfall that once helped cool the Ostirith forge and crept down the hallway toward her.
The air was less foul down here than above; a memory of the Elves preserved for just a little longer.
Galadriel cleared every room, her sword ever at the ready, and her senses divided between Sauron ahead of her and the orcs behind.
At the branch in the road, she took the one that smelled better and soon realized she was descending further into the mountain, to the smith’s forge itself.
When she reached it, her heart fell in disappointment. It was deserted and had been for some time. Great shafts, carved through the mountainside, filtered down grey, gloomy light, just barely illuminating a cold forge with long-dead embers. Along the walls, there were neatly organized rows of tools on one side of the forge and swords, axes, knives and armor on the other. The thunder of the waterfall was a soothing ambience in the distance, and troughs of clear, sweet water lay about the room, filled and purified by the gravity and water pressure of the falls.
A neatly made cot with a rough blanket on top was pushed to one corner, as if the smith who had been here had lived and breathed for his craft. As one of the Noldor, Galadriel respected his dedication.
Yet, for all that, there was nothing else here.
Sauron was not here.
The feeling inside Galadriel was too brittle and bitter, too hopeless to be called disappointment, though it was a distant cousin.
There was a pain in her chest, shar and burning, as she contemplated the evidence of her eyes that she had not known Halbrand – no, Sauron, Sauron! – at all. That he had deceived her even in this. The heartburn must be from her ingesting too much ash earlier.
“Faithless and accursed,” she whispered to the darkness, turning away.
If she hurried, she might be able to reach the other branch in the hallway, which she suspected led back up to the surface, before the orcs arrived.
If she hurried. Their stench and the foul Black Speech they uttered grew ever closer, and she had no wish to be caught in such a small space, with all the exits blocked, by them.
Yet even as she turned away, the ring of adamant on her finger flared once, only once, as bright, and pure as a star, and Galadriel gasped – too loud! – sudden fear hitting her as she tried to turn back, sword rising, already knowing it was too late…...
He was here.
Hands grabbed her from behind, one clamping down over her mouth and the other gripping her vice-like around her torso, pinning her sword to her side. She was pulled backwards into a narrow alcove which she’d missed in the darkness, and hauled tight against a hard, male chest.
“Quiet,” Halbrand hissed, his voice whispering in her ear, and at the sound and feel of him, Galadriel could no longer breathe.
The orange glow and chaotic stampede of orc feet heralded the arrival of two dozen of the creatures, pouring through the doorway into the forge. They spread out, looking for her, she realized.
Elven enchantment on her cloak or not, there was no way they’d fail to see her and Halbrand, pressed together in this alcove. Not with the light from their torches illuminating everything.
Unconsciously, she pressed further back into Halbrand, forgetting for a moment just who was holding her. Sauron was infinitely more dangerous than any number of orcs could ever be. She should take her chances with them, instead of the being who had her bound tight to himself.
She tried to wriggle to get her sword free, but he merely tightened his grip and she desisted. Even in this mortal form, as a Maiar who awoke long before even the Song of Creation, Halbrand was physically much stronger than any Elf.
His huff of amusement ghosted against her cheek, where his bearded chin pressed against the side of her face.
“Where is she,” snarled one of the orcs, and Galadriel flinched despite herself.
Halbrand was murmuring in her ear, so softly she couldn’t make out any words, although the cadence was in a language she could not recognize.
“She must be close,” growled another. Torchlight flared as an orc, larger than the others, moved to peer into their hiding place.
Galadriel’s heart was pounding, and she was afraid her shallow breaths would draw attention, as the orc came close enough to assuredly see them. It peered left, then right, then stared straight into her blue eyes, its own sickly, yellow-red gaze bloodshot and foul.
Her right hand was clenched so tight around the handle of her sword that the pommel cut her palm.
Halbarnd’s breath caught against her ear and his arm around her tightening until he was hurting her. His chanting had fallen silent, and she could feel that he was coiled tight as a snake, ready to spring. She couldn’t even feel him blinking, as they booth stared straight into the orc’s eyes.
And he stared back, without seeing them.
Then, after sniffing suspiciously at the air, so close to her face that Galadriel’s hood fluttered and she was sure she’d gotten orc boogies on her, the orc inexplicably, miraculously, turned away.
“Not here,” it muttered, in the Black Tongue.
Halbrand’s chest expanded against Galadriel’s back as he took a long, slow, deep breath, his face still pressed against the side of hers, so that it felt like he was breathing in the scent of her skin.
As one, with the eerie synchronicity of a pack of hunting wolves, the orcs turned, sniffing the air. They turned towards the doorway of the forge.
“She’s heading for the surface!” one shouted.
“Track her down,” howled the leader, as the whole pack of them swarmed towards the doorway, down the mist-filled hallway, and back out into the night.
The silence they left behind was deafening, and in the absence of any other sound, Galadriel heard her own shaking breathing – felt the rise and fall of Halbrand’s chest against her, the callouses on the warm hand which covered her mouth, and the warm breath that ghosted against her skin.
She shivered, her breathing unconsciously falling into rhythm with his.
Then anger, hot and fierce, cleared her mind of fear and reminded her why she was here. She twisted with all her might and startled, he let her go.
Galadriel spin to face him, sword already up as she prepared to run him through.
But he was no longer there. The alcove contained only shadows.
A sudden breath of air and heat, and it was as though a spell had been lifted from Galadriel’s eyes. She turned, taking in the space before her. The smithy, once dark and cold, was alive with a warm, red glow from the lit forge. The damp had been pushed back and from the few belongings scattered about the place, and the tools strewn about, the place looked lived in.
Halbrand stood in front of her, much as he had on Númenor – arms crossed over his chest, green eyes fixed on hers. His hair was damp with sweat, his face and arms touched with soot from his craft, and he looked tired. The light from the forge cloaked him in flame and hid his face in shadow, and a hint of his true nature and power glimmered around him as the light and the absence of light, both struck him.
But the same crooked grin graced his lips that she remembered. He looked her up and down; an armored and cloaked avenging elf-warrior with a bright sword pointed squarely in his direction. Her hood had fallen off, revealing her silver-gold hair, braided in a radiant crown around her head.
Seeing her, he laughed. “Let me guess, the Elves exiled you yet again.”
Galadriel snarled and leapt at him.
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