The Darkling Halls of Moria

The little girl awoke. Like rushing with great pace through a dark, completely lightless tunnel only to be embraced a second after by the intimidating light of a crimson sky. The red colour deep and impending, caught within the shady clouds which were letting the light of the sun not pass towards the with dry grass covered earth. Everything had a grey dull tone upon it. No matter ground, sky or living being. Together with the colour of the crimson clouds it seemed like the entire world would have sunken into dried blood.
   The sound reached the pointed ears of the girl only the blink of an eye later and still it has seemed for her like an eternity until all senses came to work again. It seemed that the world and time were moving with greater velocy then she could handle at once. The clashing of metal, the singing of blades and the screaming of wounded and dying ones took her finally out of her stasis and she saw that the ground was indeed drowned with blood and not only coloured by the sky.
   The sight of the battle layed bare to her young mind and eyes, and without shelter she was drawn to look upon it.
   Upon this killing and slaughtering what could not be even called battle anymore. Elves took one another’s lives like wild animals. Slashing with their long blades around as they worked through the masses like a scythe cuts the weed and the air was filled with the deadly singing of arrows.
   Here and there could be heard a command be shouted but all went under in the terrible screams and the loud crushing of bursting metal and falling bodies. The little girl had no feeling for time and it was not possible to make out any passing of it. The bloodbath went on and on, until an elven warrior fell to the naked, on blood covered ground standing, feet of the girl.
   He made no sound as he was gutted and not even his golden and shiny, but blood covered armor could have protected him. The warrior’s helm rolled away and the girl looked, caught in terror  upon the elven face. How pale the skin was. So fine and without any bumpyness or visible damage. His dark eyes looked upon the girl, not widend, but soft as he saw her golden hair that fell over her entire back, like a waterfall of pure sunlight, till her knees. The small, white and simple dress she wore completed the picture of a truly higher being and as she was merely a child of maybe a few years of age, it was like a calming illusion to the elf and his face softend.
A breeze came up, letting the elf’s grey-silver hair dance around his cheeks. His fate was sealed. And yet the little girl with the long golden hair was focused on him, scared and bewildered, she could not take her eyes off him.
   The short peace was broken as the elf’s eyes widend and the sharp edge of an elven scimitar took his life with a last strike. A black-haired elf, in a silver armor had taken his life. A simple strike had quenched the flame of the grey-haired elf’s life and never shall he stand up again. Never again shall he feel the fresh wind again, which took the blood-stained smell from the battle towards the sea. And never shall this elf breath again.
   Slowly the eyes of the little girl went up, facing the killer, who stood there; proud and high build in his silver armor. The skin even paler, almost white and the long black hair like a frame for a picture of pure cruelty. The blue eyes glimmed with malice as this elf stretched out his hand towards the little girl, who finally took action and evaded the grasp on tippling feet. She lost not much time and ran. Her breath roared in her ears like the waves of the sea crushing against the rocks of a cliff and every breath she took felt like a hot knife piercing her small chest.
   Yet the fair little girl ran. Ran like the wind, but she felt soon the grasp of the elf’s hand and she did not dare to turn around. She was shaking and blinded by fear, a single scream escaping her small, well-formed red lips.
A scream of such innocence and begging for help that the nearby trees of the forest of Neldoreth were shaken to their roots and even the hand hesitated before then grabbing harsh the girl’s shoulder.
   “Nana!”, she screamed, tears rolling over her face as she was dragged, and felt like falling into a deep hole of creeping darkness which was about to devour the little girl of the Vanyar.


A sudden and rough voise wrenched Nimlaïwen from her dream. Still with the terrible picture of the kin slaying in her mind, she was not able to orientate herself and not to order the voice to someone she knew. Half blinded by her confused thoughts, her hands went several times over her face, until she finally realized that she layed on a hard and stony, cold ground and that she has been asleep. That the horrend pictures were all illusion and not real.
   The voice sounded again: “Mylady… awake! We must go. I heared the mean crackle again in the halls down below.”
   Nimlaïwen opend her eyes and like a curtain, her long eyelashes, gave the vision free unto the aged face of an man. His skin was not at all pale like from the elves she had seen within her dream. This man’s skin had more tone in it. It looked healthier on him, yet there were many wrinkles around his dimples and upon his forehead. Wrinkles of threatening size were aswell to be spotted under both of his hazelnut-brown eyes, which were glimming, unlike the black-haired elf’s with a great warmth and wisdom. It did not seem that this man had enough sleep the passed days and so his face looked troubled and tired as he frowned at the elven-maiden.
   “By Elbereth, are thee wakend, Mylady?”
   “I am awake, Randir. But let me come to thought. The mind of mine is still clouded by mist and not clear to let my tongue form my words.”
   Nimlaïwen’s voice was of rare beauty. Sweet and bright in mortal ears, like a tone was a word and when she spoke her sentences she formed a theme of wonderful harmony and she spoke with clear rhythm to give the harmony the missing melody as partner. When she spoke Westernis, she did it always with a slight singing tending to astonish others.
   The elven-maiden sat up and the golden hair followed her moving. It fell down her back like a rushing waterfall of sunlight and the end which would hang until the back of her knees layed upon the grey stony ground. Unlike Randir, who was cloathed in a greyish-brown, old and ragged robe, with a well-worn leather belt around his hip, on which a sword in its sheath and several small bags and pouches hang, was Nimlaïwen dressed in a simple red coloured elvish robe, which was now covered with dust and a few cob-webs had been finding their ways unto the long sleeves. Her fine and slim hands and fingers were within gloves, in red colour aswell, but with a golden muster of lines and minarets upon them. Two rings on her left hand, which seemed not of great crafting, but she wore a ruby ring with a light-golden socket on her right ring-finger.
   Nimlaïwen stood slowly up. She was on bare feet and her light steps caused no sound on the cold and dark, stony ground. She took a glimpse on herself, her dark-blue eyes spotting the cob-webs, which were quickly removed by even quicker hands. With her next move the elven-maiden with the golden hair brushed off most of the dust and peered then to her friend.
   Sjageon Randir stood good a bit taller then Nimlaïwen. An aged slim and tall man, with hair so brown as his eyes, yet it was visibly becoming grey. His long hair fell over his shoulders and over the backpack he carried. His beard was normally neatly trimed but without the time and the correct place it had sprouted quickly over his cheeks and chin, leaving him looking even older.
   The maiden crouched and picked up her backpack aswell, which she had been using to rest her head upon, while asleep.
   A traveller who would not know of their different origin could easily mistake Nimlaïwen for Randir’s daughter. Her figure was slim, like the body of a weakly girl who has recently developed to a woman. And yet she was of utter beauty. Her skin was pale as the moon-light itself and her red-lips were wonderful shaped, with a red and full colour like passionate flames. Nimlaïwen’s eyes were deep. It was like to gaze into a bottomless well. Deep they went; deeper and deeper.
   It was merely not likely to meet a traveller within the place they travelled. As Nimlaïwen looked up at the sky, she layed eyes upon grey and dark stone. With a look to the horizon she saw stone aswell.
   There was no blue sky in Moria. And there was no sun what would give the two travellers light. Only Randir’s belt buckle glowed in a soft white light within the darkness and showed them like a lamp where their path would lie.
   “The halls below from whence I noticed the crackling laughter we should not seek. I warn thee, Mylady, something lurkth there down not asleep nor weak!”
   Randir had the, for mere townsfolk confusing, habit to always rhyme and almost always to let the rhyme end on the last word. He let no chance out to make use of this habit, not even in the most unsuitable situations.
   Nimlaïwen nodded firmly at Randir’s words and shouldered her backpack. The maiden carried no visible weapon. “I feel it too, friend. Something what should better be let unseen is down there and we are better with our fate to go up again and not to be any longer within these darkling depths. It is no place for my kind and neither for thine! Not even the Naughrim seek out these caves. In every shadow lurkth death.”
   Randir frowned deeply, the wrinkles becoming even deeper on his forehead and causing slight shadows as the light from his belt met them. His hunchbacked nose wrinkled as if he would sniff the air as he looked into the darkness which seemed to roar at them from the doorway they camped infront of. Nothing good could come from such depths.
   The man grunted. “Not a dragon’s treasure could bring me towards down there. Buisness in these halls are not of my affair. Let us return at once and unharmed, before we find us by ork-kind charmed. And I have no need of goblins’ blades.”
   He peered into the dark but his eyes were not able to spot anything. Randir muttered. Nimlaïwen’s eyes on the other hand were much stronger then any eye-pair of the mortal kind and actually sharper then most elven eyes aswell. She could easily spot what would await them once they would cross the treshold of the door-way. A round stair, screwing in circles further into the earth. The elven-maiden shook her head and peered at the huge stairs they came from. The way back would be the better choice and there would lie foolishness in the one’s decision to walk even deeper.
   “We shall then return,” Nimlaïwen said. “I see no reason to walk the nether earth, for once I did so already and it was an experience of greatest danger and I nearly have lost life and sanity under these walls of iron and darkling halls. Let our feet be swift and steady and our steps careful and silent.”
   With those words, they turned, the dark opening still hungering for them and by a closer look, seeming to crawl towards them. A hole of darkness, devouring anything what would dare to enter or to set foot upon the treshold. Nimlaïwen shuddered at the thought as she remembered her dream and could not help but looking back towards the door-way. There was silence in the deep tunnels of Moria.
   Quickly they climbed up the stairs which stretched itself up for several miles. From time to time they passed one of the great pillars which arose from the middle of the giantous stair and the two travellers found dwarf-runes upon them, giving names or maybe way-descriptions. But that only a dwarf could know, because not Nimlaïwen nor Randir could speak Khazâd, the tongue of the dwarves. So they followed the way up several hours until they came to the top and took the door-way to their left, going back the way they came.
   They encountered nothing and nobody and their voices remained silent. Yet who they should have met beyond any point of civilisation and in the maze of Khazâd-Dûm? The dwarves of Durin’s folk was on the upper levels, for the battles against the goblins and orks were long taken away from these places and the labyrinth of tunnels, holes and halls, parted by impacts of stone were not yet re-taken or fully explored.
   “A Vanya-maiden under the earth. Thy people never would believed that one of their own would make in Moria for even one night her berth.”, Randir said after hours of silent wandering.
   Nimlaïwen was indeed of the Vanyar. Yet she was no ‘full’ one, as she often tended to say. She was born in Avallónë, the haven-city on Tol Eressä . Her mother Imirilë, was of the Vanyar . Her father was one of the Noldor and from him, she inherited the pride which dwells strongly in her.
   “Few elves have walked these caverns, and I am certaintly not the first, neither to be the last one who doeth as such. Still, to not be able to see the sky and the stars, not be visible towards Eärendil and the absence of trees, will let me sicken in time. This is no place to dwell in, if thou callest thy kin quendi.”
   “I just wonder how deep we are that we cannot even smell the outside’s autumn…”, Randir paused for a moment, as if pondering. He looked at Nimlaïwen, sending her a quite amused smile, showing his teeth which seemed to be well taken care of. The Vanya returned it. “… Well, certaintly enough to fall of the bottom.”
A sudden whistling caught their attention but  what was to happen next was happening too swift as that an reaction could be planned. The black and with a venom treated arrow plunged through the backpack of the aged man with ease and as he was still to spot the archer as goblin, Nimlaïwen turned already and sought shelter behind one of the pillars. Randir followed, not hesitating a further moment.
   A few more arrows flew their way, but none of them hit their intended target, for the man and elf were well protected by the broad pillars of stone, which stood everywhere in the great hall they no longer simply walked but tried to cross. Nimlaïwen counted the arrows. Three, four, five… No sixth flew and now the archers would already ready their bows for the next hail and then move certaintly around the pillars at both sides to take the two intruders into cross-fire.
   The Vanya heard the sound of rasping metal as Randir drew his blade and cursed under his breath, peering to the archers. He quickly drew his head back as an arrow flew as answer.
   “Damn these crook-leged bastards! Three of them and two with halberds, who come slow and on tiptoe for our harrow.”
   The plan of those hideous creatures was obvious. Two of them would come to each side, to drive Randir and Nimlaïwen out of their hiding spots at what point they would make an easy target for the arrows of the archers.
The goblins might have wondered what the elf was doing as Nimlaïwen picked up a rock in the size of her palm, weighing it in her hand. A quick nod to Randir was enough to make him understand what was to happen after this stone would have left her hand.
   Behind them the goblins and their readied bows, before them a hall, several yards long, until it would come to take a turn to the right. Whether this way would lead upwards aswell, was yet to discover. Nimlaïwen rose up her arms and let the rock fly with speed and elven agility. Instantly the two ran down the hall. The rock smacked one of the goblins’ iron hemets letting the creature scatter in  rage and anger!
   Running now in unpredictable musters and slightly crouched to make less of a good target, they ran as swift as their legs could carry them.
   Randir’s backpack was hit once more and the arrow would have certaintly penetrated the whole bag and made its way into the soft flesh of his back, when he would not have his book with him.
   “Plok!”, it made as the arrow got stuck in the heavy leather-cover. The other arrows missed their aim and unharmed Nimlaïwen and Randir turned to the right, facing another hall with many old and wracked houses of stone. Quickly they entered the maze of ruins, standing here a better chance against their, them outnumbering enemy.
Behind them they heard the evil and high-pitched, what seemed to be laughter of the goblins. More must have had  come…