Chapter
Ten
A livid sky on
And like the iron steeds that rear
A shock of engines halted
And I knew the end was near:
And something said that far away, over the
hills and far away
There came a crawling thunder and the end
of all things here.
For
As digging lets the daylight on the sunken
streets of yore,
The lightning looked on
The ending of a broken road where men
shall go no more.
Excerpt
from ‘The Old Song’ by GK Chesterton
*************
The
bridge that connected
By
the time Peter de Colechurch had began construction of
By
the end of this day, the city planners would need to consider its next guise.
*************
If
there had been anyone to catalogue the entomology of the creatures known as the
Watchers, they would have learned much to their surprise that these water
dwelling creations of Melkor were amphibious, not completely aquatic as
previously believed. Water gave the large, awkwardly shaped beasts the fluidity
of movement and speed needed to snare its prey. However, watchers were by no
means, trapped to it or helpless in a terrestrial environment.
Many
of them still remained in Arda, hidden in secret places that would give the
race of men much anxiety if it were known. Most remained in the depths of the
world, in deep caves or on the ocean floor were the eating was good and
anonymous. Many longed for the flesh of man but to do so would be to expose
themselves and the race if nothing else was tenacious when under the threat
from a predator. Others remained asleep for that too, was a characteristic of
the breed that largely unknown.
Whatever
their course through the ages all that had changed with the call to arms by the
former lieutenant of their creator who reeked with his master’s power and
provided them with a reason to awake. From the depths they began emerging, the
call to chaos bringing them from the bottom of the sea, from watery caves
beneath riverbeds and lochs.
They
were ordered to gather at the mouth of the river known as the ‘Dark One’, the
location selected by their new lord for its irony. In language of the ancient
Celts, the translation of Dark One was the Tame or in modern speech, the
On
the morning that Sauron, Lord of Mordor, now David Saeran arrived in
It
was perhaps the first time since their creation that the Watchers had assembled
like this and in the meeting; the ancient beasts began to sing the songs of
their youth, a sound that resembled the earth shuddering. Like other leviathans
at play, the dark beast swam around the pylons of
The
*************
She
hated fish.
She
hated it with a bloody passion.
Day in and day out, that’s all she could smell.
Salmon, trout, hake, bream and cod. Megan swore than no amount of
showering could remove the stench. It wasn’t as if she didn’t like fish to
start of with but working every day at Billingsgate Fish Market had made her
wholly sick of anything that lived under the sea. Trapped in her little Honda
with the usual gridlock traffic on
The
only trouble was the fish.
Although
the authorities were still claiming fervently that everything was alright and
that the strange reports about the strife in Cornwall, Dorset, Devon, parts of
Somerset, Hampshire and Surrey were just rumour, the public was finding it
harder and harder to believe it. The communication black out that prevented any
sort of television; radio or even Internet connection to these counties did not
cease in the days that followed the first incident in Cornwell. The authorities
were claiming a terrorist attack, that some sort of mass hallucinogen had been
deployed over those areas of
Refugees
pouring out of those areas arrived with implausible stories of dragons and
giant spiders were immediately ordered to bed with advice to drink milk to
break down the chemical in their systems, by those who received them. The
government, unable to reduce public hysteria by any other means had concocted
the story of a mass hallucinogenic gas and were had produced measures to ensure
the effects wore off in good time. In the meantime the communication silence
continued and the roads to southwest were blockaded by men with guns and a
great deal of conviction.
Thus
the roads were jammed with people who had heard nothing from relatives and
friends in those counties, as they travelled to the scene of the blockade and
waited on the other side of the barriers for the appearance of loved ones. The media continued to scream cover-up as the
press were similarly barred from crossing the blockade to report the news from
those affected areas. There were
disturbing reports of some journalists that had been shot and across the
planet, the world watched with held breath at what was taking place in
Setting
down the bottle of water she had just taken a sip from onto the dashboard,
Megan looked ahead and saw the shimmer of heated air, thanks to the exhaust
pipe of the mini in front of her. Once again
Suddenly
she noted the water within the bottle resting on the dash shimmer from the
rumble of the car. Even though the engine was idling, Megan hadn’t thought the
drone from the engine was all that noticeable. Just to be safe, she reached for
the bottle and tightened the cap to ensure that nothing escaped if it should
vibrate off the dashboard. That’s the last thing she needed this morning on top
of everything else.
She
hadn’t given the whole thing a second thought when suddenly the sound like a
thousand great horns boomed through the air with such force; she dropped the
bottle on her lap and let out a cry that was drowned in the blare of the
noise. It did not stop and seem to
increase until her windscreen shattered and as she raised her hand to shield
her eyes, saw other cars experiencing the same troubles. Thanking her brother
for convincing her to pay for the shatterproof glass. The windscreen had
managed to hold its shape despite shattering. Breaks like the webbing of a
spider spread across the glass.
Reaching
for the door handle, she staggered out of the car and saw other cars
experiencing the same phenomena. Outside, the sound seemed louder and Megan
covered her ears trying to block out the powerful blare. People were clambering
out their vehicles, trying to escape the explosion of sound and glass. Some
were shouting but their cries could not be heard over the noise. It seemed to
be all around them and in a confused state; she wondered what she was causing
it.
Something
slammed hard against the wall and though Megan couldn’t see it, she certainly
felt it. Like a ship ramming into the concrete. The vibration travelled past
the soles of her feet into her bones. The impact was hard enough to make her
stumble and she saw her char actually shudder.
“DID
YOU FEEL THAT?” She shouted to a man near her. He was bleeding over the left
eye while trying to shake glass off his clothes.
He
saw her mouth move and try to answer when the impact was felt again, this time
stronger and she was not alone in feeling it. Others had begun to look around
them, trying to discern from when this shudder had come. Was the bridge going
to collapse? Megan thought frantically for a moment, a flurry of panicked
thoughts racing through her mind as she tried to decide how far it was to the
other end. The other motorists who were on the bridge with her had similar
thoughts and while some clung to the disbelief that this would turn out well,
others did not.
Reaching
through the open door of her car, Megan grabbed her handbag and decided that
she wasn’t’ staying. Slinging the leather strap around the shoulder, her
footing was awkward because of the continued shuddering of the bridgework.
Convinced now that the terrorists had bombed the bridge like they had to the
Tube not long ago, she had come to the decision that the safest place was on
solid ground. Joining the exodus of
motorists, she began running.
Suddenly
the sound stopped.
The
stillness that followed was even more chilling than the trembling bridge.
People paused and looked at each other, with only a small rise of chattering
breaking the quiet as questions were asked as to what was happening. Megan
thought it was like the calm before a storm and began to move once again,
absolute in her certainty that the silence was not a good sign. She had not
made more than a few steps when a scream tore through the air.
It
was a woman with flailing arms, shrieking pure unadulterated terror as she was
hoisted into the air by what could only be described as tentacle belonging to
some family of octopi. The size of it
was beyond any she had seen before, almost a foot in width, coiling around its
victim with almost effortless strength. Her shriek followed her across the air
as she was borne away to the side of the bridge.
Her
cry of terror was but the first.
Soon,
there were other screams not just women but men, children and following that
hitch pitched scream of fear, there followed an even more terrifying sound; the
shriek of agony that followed the stomach turning crunch of flesh and bone.
Near paralyzed with terror, Megan remained rooted to the spot, watching people
being picked off like flies by tentacles belong to creatures that were crawling
up the side of the bridge.
A
man had dove into his car but could not escape, the tentacle wrapped around the
vehicle and lifted him up in the air. She saw him pounding against the glass,
his eyes wide with horror before disappearing beyond the railing. Something
inside her snapped at that moment and she began running. The screams across the bridge was almost
deafening now as multiple tentacles sprouted like the heads of a hydra,
spiriting away victims over the railing and into the water.
She was sobbing in fear, terrified that she would not
make it to the end. The pandemonium across the bridge was almost complete in
its virulence. People were screaming, running, trying to hide in cars. Some had
returned to their vehicles, trying to drive off the bridge, crossing the
barrier between driveway and pedestrian walk, hoping to clear the gridlock.
Their success in reaching it only brought them closer to the edge of the
bridge, where whatever menace was attacking them, had a better view of its
prey. Megan gasped as she saw whole cars being lifted off the side railings,
splashing into the drink a moment later.
A chance glimpse at the direction of the
As she continued her desperate flight for freedom, she
as man grasping at the bars of the railing, desperate to remain on the bridge
as the tentacle around his waist coiled around him, tightening its grip and
continuing to tug and tug at him. Megan wanted to stop but she knew she would
never be able to free him and may end up in the same perilous state. As their
eyes met, she saw his anguish at the dying to come and knowing that she could
not help him. She saw his sobs of horror and fear end with a final powerful
yank by the beast.
His fingers
slackened around the railing.
He did not have time to scream and for that she was
grateful because his eyes would follow her to the grave, however, soon that
moment might soon come upon her. She looked away from him and saw the tentacles
waving about in the air, waving his lower body like a prize, sending blood and
viscera everywhere. Her own screams were preempted by the complete loss of
control of her stomach.
So fixed was her focus, so determined was she to
escape the reach of the monsters that were slaughtering people around her so
indiscriminately, she did not hear the beating of great wings overhead. Only
when she felt the shadow falling upon her did she lift her blue eye so the sky
and thought for an absurd moment, she was staring at the great wings of an
angel. However, this illusion was quickly shattered when another loud bellow
filled the air that made her think of the T-Rex in that Spielberg film.
The blast of fire that swept over Megan Stanley,
incinerating her where she stood, came so swiftly that she neither had time to
scream nor register the pain of flesh being seared off her bones. The fire
rolled across her, continuing forward like a juggernaut, making the tar beneath
to bubble and cooking alive anyone who had taken refuge within their vehicles.
The tentacled beasts moved further down the
As their water bound brothers continued onward, the dragons, like Ethelred
the Unready, set
*************
“Come on,” Lori cursed as she wiped the sweat from her
brow. “How hard can this fucking be?”
She wanted to kick and scream, leaving the wretched
thing alone but she couldn’t. She simply couldn’t. Lieutenant Lori Hill had to
try again or else she was going to die here.
Taking a deep breath, she tried again, feeling more
and more frustrated at her lack of success. She knew what she was doing, or
rather had a rough idea of what she wanted to do but the execution needed
finesse and after one day in
Four wires, she told herself. All she had to do was
get these four wires in the ignition chamber to connect properly and she could
get the hell out of here.
It had been almost a full day since she had ejected
from her plane over the skies of the
Of course, upon arriving at
It appalled her to no end that the stench of flesh
burning was something she had become accustomed to in the last 24 hours.
Making the attempt to manipulate the collection of
wires into place, Lori wiped her brow again in the front seat of the hatchback
she had found relatively intact, parked in the garage she had taken refuge in.
That night, she had remained huddled in its back seat, keeping still and
praying that whatever she had spied roaming the streets of
The entire town was like a scene from some B grade
horror movie starring Peter Cushing or Wings Hauser. It wasn’t the scenes of
destruction and corpses that unnerved her so, it was the big black bodies of
large spiders scurrying along the walls of buildings, spinning webs between
lamp posts, capturing birds and people who wandered unwittingly into it. She
saw what she thought were dogs, looking like bears, patrolling the town with
malevolent yellow eyes.
And then there were the guys in the dark cloaks.
Dementors, that’s what she called them, Dementors.
It was the closest she could come describing the tall dark men in their flowing
black cloaks, whose faces were hidden beneath hoods and whose eyes looked
glowing embers of fire. When she saw them, he breath had caught and perhaps it
was the chill of the English weather but Lori felt a shiver run down her back
and wrap itself around her spine in tendrils of cold. For seconds after they
had gone, she could feel only the fear lingering inside her bones, like an
unpleasant after taste she could not get out of her mouth.
A good hour had passed before she dared to
move again and even then the sense of dread they had left behind in their wake
was hard to dispel. She spent the rest of the night, clutching her service
revolver to her chest, listening to every sound. From the moment the sun had
set, she saw them moving through
The strange procession of creatures moved
down the street, led by the ‘Dementors’ before they mounted what looked like a
dragon only smaller and less formidable. The winged creatures allowed
themselves to be mounted like horses before carrying its riders aloft. Lori was
trapped between her fear and her fascination at what these things were.
Forgetting their destructive might, seeing the dragons take flight across the
sky was one of the most incredible scenes she had ever seen. Majestic, powerful, it was difficult to deny
that they were in their own way beautiful.
The other thing that stood out in her
memory during her viewing of this
She didn’t recognize him but the fact that
he was their leader was undeniable.
The man and his companion, a human female
with just enough swell to her belly to indicate pregnancy emerged from the town
cathedral before joining the creatures on the street. Climbing on the backs of
the winged animals that also carried the ‘Dementors’, both were borne away into
the night sky, amidst the flapping of great wings. While the man seemed totally
confident and master of all before him, the mask of fear on the woman’s face
struck Lori. However she had come to be in this situation, it was not by
choice. If Lori weren’t utterly certain that it would get her killed and avail
the woman nothing, she would have tried to help her.
As it was, once both riders were on the
backs of the winged beasts, the creatures gained altitude with the grace of a
bird, belying its cruel serpentine visage. She watched them ascend, along with
the ‘Dementors’ and as if some silent order had been issued, the rest of the
bestiary began their journey out of Exeter. As they departed down the road, Lori
was able to see for the first time, the complete menagerie of creatures that
had laid waste to this small English town.
Watching them made her skin crawl and
renewed her determination to get to authorities and warn them what was coming
their way. In the air, the dragons flew like flocks of birds, the power of
their great wings, making the trees rustle as they passed. On the ground, there
were the wolves or bears, she couldn’t tell what they were exactly; only that
they were bigger than the largest tiger she had ever seen and muscles rippled
powerfully under glossy russet pelts. The spiders were larger than dogs and
they were so many that no matter how much Lori told herself that she was an air
force pilot who had seen worse things, she still came down with a severe case
of the heebie-jeebies at the sight of the things.
Marching along with the wolf/bears and the
spiders, were what she could only call giants. Of course these weren’t anything
like the Robbie Coltrane version. These ones didn’t look remotely human. They
were big and hairless, their features seemed melted and though biped, they were
hunched forward, carrying huge clubs and maces. There were so many that Lori
knew the two magazines of .357 caliber shells for her Smith-Wesson
semi-automatic was just not going to keep her alive for very long if they
became aware of her presence.
She had watched long enough to know she
needed to hide and hide well. They were leaving and the sensible course was to
keep out of sight until they had gone. She returned to her hiding place and
squirreled in for the night, wondering what Stygian nightmare she had found
herself. This was the 21st century and yet her plane had gone down
because of an ambush by a fire-breathing dragon.
It didn’t get much weirder than that.
The next morning, Lori awoke to find
herself thankfully alone in the town.
Her brief exploration what she had
surmised the night before; everyone was dead and if they weren’t dead, they had
wisely left before they met the grisly demise of those who had not. Each house she entered was the scene of some
violence with grisly discoveries waiting to be found. When she did not find
blood, she instead noted evidence of yet another hasty departure. After trying
to use a dozen phones, Lori gathered the tools she needed to start the car she
had found.
A rumble of the engine after another burst
of electricity brought the car to life and Lori let out a cry of triumph.
Unfortunately, upon sitting up and taking a look at the gauges, it seemed her
luck was only half good. The gauge on the gas tank indicated that it was almost
empty. With another curse, Lori powered down the engine and went in search of
gas. Considering what she had seen, she wanted to have fuel enough to get her
to the nearest military base, which in this case was at
She walked to the local gas station and
found that the pumps were not working. No big surprise, Lori thought to
herself, power lines were undoubtedly damaged in the fires. Hoping to find a
jerry can at least, she walked to the closed garage and pulled open the sliding
door. It was heavy and creaked as it moved along its rails. Entering the
darkness, she pushed the door further along, intending to let in more light so
she could see.
The first thing that hit her was the
stench.
Its stink was so potent and ripe that
Lori’s stomach hollowed immediately. She nearly gagged and wondered, against
her better judgment, what could possibly be in here, in a garage to cause this
rancid stench. Widening the door did not help and Lori reached into her flight
jacket to pull out her trusty Zippo lighter to provide some illumination on the
subject. A second later, she wished she hadn’t. As if the night before hadn’t
been some twisted chamber of horrors, what she saw now destroyed any attempt at
bravado that Lori tended to wear around herself when she was hiding her fear.
The bodies were wrapped in silk, dangling
from the ceiling.
Not all of them of them were dead and
although there was nothing to be done for them. The eggs sacs had been fastened
around their flesh and during the course of formation, the tiny hatchling
inside them had begun to feed. If these people were still alive than she
couldn’t begin to imagine what they agony they were enduring. What parts of
them she could see resembled dry husks like cordwood and some were missing
limbs as they were slowly eaten alive by hungry hatchlings. She counted a dozen
easily and knew she couldn’t leave them like this.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered and pulled
out her gun, taking aim at them.
If they heard her, they certainly did not
answer.
The first bullet cracked its victim skull
with a wet splatter but it was to Lori’s horror that there wasn’t blood enough
in the body to cause any crimson spray. Spiders fed by desiccating their meals,
she reminded herself, there wouldn’t be much blood.
Suddenly a flurry of movement caught her
eye and she heard a sound like something wet tearing. Holding up her lighter,
trying to see what this might be, she began to retreat out the door when she
was stopped by the sound of something scratching against the wood. First it was
singular and then it became many, until she decided that it was time to leave.
She turned to the door and saw them, like a black swarm barring her way, daring
her to cross the threshold.
“Screw this,” Lori thought, bracing
herself before leaping through the entry.
One of them landed on her back and the
size of it was like a cat. Ignoring her revulsion, she grabbed one of its legs
and ripped if off her flight suit, flinging it aside. Not allowing herself time
to think of twice, Lori took aim and fired. The infant spider had just enough
time to roll onto its spindly legs and skitter towards her when the .357 shells
tore it apart with sickly squelch. However, it appeared she was nowhere out of
trouble. The swarm began to run down the doorway and spilled out into concrete,
coming towards her.
No way was she going to be dealing with
these things while trying to find an escape out of town. Looking at the
abandoned shop front of the gas station, Lori ran into the establishment and
scanned the aisle for what she needed. She didn’t have much time, they were
starting to spread out, some after her, some not. In either case, she wasn’t
letting them get past this point. The soldier in her refused to let it happen.
Picking up what she needed, a handful of them, she hurled the bottle into the
thickest part of the swarm.
The glass bottle shattered, spraying the
creatures with its yellowish fluid. Wasting no time, she let out a round and
stood back as the turpentine ignited thanks to the effect a full metal jacket
bullet had on concrete. They screamed in agony as the flames lit them up and
she saw others retreating before she flung another bottle in that direction and
set that alight to. She continued to do so until they had retreated into the
garage. Then she threw the remaining bottles into it and set that alight
too.
*************
Astonishing as it might seem, the thoughts
of Legolas Greenleaf were not fixed upon the rampage of Sauron through Arda but
rather on the wife that was sailing not only to
He knew that he was to blame for much of
what had transpired between them and shocked as he might have been for her
desire to dissolve their union, if not their bonding, Legolas could not find it
in himself to deny her. In fact, as he assessed his conduct over the years, he
realized a good deal of what she said was truthful. He was drawn to her because
she was Melia in another life. His whole impetus for becoming her husband was
because of his love for the Ranger he had wedded in Arda.
The Ranger he had never been able to let
go.
He had clung to the memory of her and
forgotten all about Ariel. His regret was profound but he did not know how to
change, did not know how to alter the course he had unwisely set. Legolas
longed for his wife but only because she radiated the spirit of his old love.
He wondered if he had ever bothered to even know his wife, the woman not the
soul. To his shame, he knew the answer was no.
Perhaps it was for the best that they went
their separate ways…
The thought was not allowed to complete
itself as it was interrupted by the sudden crack of gunfire.
Legolas straightened up immediately, the keen senses of his elven hearing
allowing him to hear before anyone else in the SUV vehicle that
It would serve no purpose to fill their
heads with so much destruction for the more they saw it, the greater the risk
that their belief in Sauron’s defeat would be diminished.
“We have to stop,” Fred declared from her
place in between Miranda and Frank.
”What?”
“Fred, are you sure?” Miranda asked
although she was fairly certain that if the girl said they needed to stop, then
they needed to stop.
“She speaks true
“What direction?” the former MI6 man asked
automatically.
“Over there,” Legolas pointed to a stretch
of road.
“
“That’s where we have to go.” Fred
reaffirmed, glancing at both Frank and Miranda as she spoke.
“Then that’s where we’ll go luv,” Frank
retorted, still going through the motions that it was a child seated between
himself and his wife even though everything that Fred had said and done since
they left Valinor said otherwise. Nevertheless, the occupant of Fred’s body had
been wrong about nothing since they had arrived here. While Elrond and Galadriel knew who it was
inside her, neither was about to reveal it and the girl herself, remained
damnably evasive.
”Jesus,” Aaron uttered bitterly, “I don’t think it’s going to stop making me
sick no matter how many times I see the same thing.”
The sound of gunfire was audible to all of
them now and
*************
In retrospect, Lori realized that burning
down the spider hatchery was probably not such a good idea.
Mostly because upon discovering the
eminent danger, the hatchlings had erupted from their sacs, found the quickest
way out of the burning building before joining the remainder of their rather
irate that had not been trapped with fire.
And like all new predators, the first
thing on their mind was food.
Unfortunately as Lori was responsible for
burning down their nest where their parents had left them provisions
that left her as their best source of nourishment since she was the only living
thing left in
The best plan she had was the car she had
been working on. It didn’t have much gas but at least it would get her far
enough away from here to come up with another plan or better, yet, not be eaten
for awhile. Not being eaten for a while was really the foremost thought on her
mind as she tore down the road, emptying rounds into the sea of black bodies
behind her. After this day, no spider of any size was going to survive long
near her person.
The Air Force lieutenant focused on
getting away and did not think about how close or persistent the creatures
were. If she began to think on that, she might as well let the things kill her
now because she’d be no good to anyone let her alone herself. She maintained this line of reasoning when
the last bullet impacted against the round body of a spider, splattering
noisome material over the others around it. Lori felt her stomach hollow when
she saw a group of them close in on their dead sibling and feeding, giving her
a clear indication of just how ravenous they were.
Suddenly, amidst all this, she heard what
sounded awfully like the drone of a car engine.
Her heart swelling with hope, Lori hoped
this wasn’t the product of wishful thinking as she put more power into her
strides, determined to gain a few more precious feet so that she could stay
alive long enough to find the vehicle in question. She had been a runner in
high school but even her reserves were being stretched to the limit. If she
didn’t rest soon, her legs were going to give out.
Its game over then Lorelei. Thank you for playing. Nope, sorry not going
to go out as a bug smorgasbord. Air force people didn’t die as insect food.
They died surrounded by twisted metal and glass, the way God intended.
When the SUV skidded around the corner,
Lori came to an abrupt halt.
Behind her, the spiders were gaining and
she resumed running, putting the last of her reserves to close the distance
between her and the vehicle. Discarding her useless gun, she saw the driver
swing the wheel hard, turning the vehicle around so that the back of the
vehicle faced her. For a moment, she almost thought that they were going to
leave but then the SUV came to a screeching halt. The hatch door lifted open
and a blond woman was shouting at her.
“Get in! Get in!”
Don’t have to tell me twice sister, Lori
thought to herself as she put everything she had into reaching the vehicle. The
spiders sensing that their prey was close to escape had begun launching
themselves at her in a desperate attempt to stop Lori from reaching safe
harbor. The distance she had gained was narrowing and when she looked behind
her to see the ferocity of the pursuit, Lori knew if she didn’t reach that SUV
in the next few seconds, she’d never leave
“HURRY!” A male voice shouted.
Deciding to make or break, Lori jumped the
last few feet, her knees making contact with the carpeted floor of the vehicle
when she landed. Her kneecaps flared with pain and she felt hands pulling her
the rest of the way in. Looking over her shoulder, she saw the spiders jumping
forward too.
“GO! GO! GO!” She demanded.
The spiders began jumping off the paved
road towards the open door.
“
"Hey you alright?" Aaron asked
the dark haired woman who was breathing hard and regaining her composure from
the front of the SUV. "You hurt?"
"Oh I'm just goddamn peachy!"
Lori cursed, letting her nerves settle after that rather nerve-wracking night
but grateful to hear a familiar accent.
"Ah you Yanks turn such a lovely
phrase," Eric smirked in Aaron's direction.
"Yeah right," Lori retorted
looking over her rescuers, "because Russell Crowe is such a class
act."
Eric opened his mouth to respond but was
given a look of sisterly warning from Miranda.
"Behave," she ordered
before turning back to Lori. "Are you alright?" She asked the
question and this time, she wanted a proper answer.
"I'm fine," Lori said
recognizing the woman as someone who was accustomed to being in charge. She had no problems with that, especially
when these people had saved her from what would have a pretty awful death.
"Thanks for coming by when you did. I don't think I was going to keep
ahead of those things much longer."
Legolas was staring at the woman, thinking
that this was indeed a perfect example of Aaron's more description of their
past selves finding each other again, cosmic turntables indeed.
Lori caught the blond man staring and
furrowed her brow when she noticed something strange about him.
"Hey," she declared to no one in
particular. "What's with the ears?"
*************
It had taken less than an hour after the
first watcher had collided against the underwater pylons for a good portion of
the bridge to crumble and disappear beneath the waters of the
Emergency services and police were
galvanized into action but their rescue efforts were hampered by a number of
factors; firstly they had no idea what it was they were dealing with and
secondly, an even greater peril had shown itself in the form of the great
dragons who were now bathing south
This time however, David Saeran did
nothing to disrupt the communication blackout that had kept the southwest in
the dark. This time, he let the news crews with their cameras capable of
invading every home, every computer on the planet; see what he wanted them to
see. They took in the grisly images of the bridges and the humans on it who
were torn apart by the watchers. He allowed the world to see his dragons
swooping down on
With amusement, he watched from the backs
of the winged beasts, the army being mobilized to deal with the Watchers.
Soldiers were rallied from
A large group of these so called ‘special
forces’ types approached Southwark bridge in an attempt to rescue the slowly
dwindling number of people who were still left alive that hadn’t been taken by
the Watchers and had yet to reach safety. Saeran watched as Morgul’s beast
descended upon them. From his vantage point on top of Mansion House, he watched
his most powerful lieutenant stepped fearlessly into the fray, with Khamul and
Ren at his side. The humans had no idea what to make of these dark robed
figures and reacted in almost predictable fashion.
The hail of bullets from their Bren
machines guns did little to halt the Nazgul whom Saeran had ensured would never
be hurt by the weapons of man and this occasion was no different. Morgul seemed
to move through the bullets as if they were hardly there and as the soldiers
recovered from this, the Nazul paused before them. His abrupt stop confused
them and Saeran smile when he saw them reloading their weapons, desperately
seeking another avenue of attack.
It never came.
The Black Breath escaped the trio of
wraiths and struck down anyone in its path, soldier and civilian alike. In the
surrounding buildings, all who heard it immediately felt into a dark malaise of
despair, frozen in place unable to do anything.
The soldiers crumbled to their knees, unable to fight the dark magic as their
weapons clattered uselessly to the ground.
Suddenly the sound erupted with the sound
of powerful engines as Saeran looked up to see even more planes approaching the
dragons in the distance. Probably from Tidwoth or even
After all, even dragons knew how to play.
*************
If Elrond had been sequestered away during
the voyage to
Emerging into the deck, he saw in the
distance the pillars of smoke rising into the sky from the land in the
distance. They had sailed with the shore within sight, navigating the coast of
the islands that had once been the Shire. While its present residents did not
recall its history, Elrond could sense that the land itself remembered quite clearly.
As he stepped onto the deck, he saw his
fellow elves hard at work. Indeed, many had been engaged in such duty since
they had departed Valinor and continued this labour through the voyage. Ahead
of the fleet they could see the ripples in the water that indicated the passage
of Captain Hill’s own undersea vehicle. Elrond like Cirdan, could not imagine a
more indifferent way of traveling in Ulmo’s realm. How could one travel so deep
in the ocean and be so far removed away from all its beauty and power at the
same time?
The ways of the Edain could be very
strange at times.
“Can you feel it?” Elrond asked as he
approached Cirdan who stood at the bow of his ship, watching the smoke rising
in the distance, a beacon of darkness calling out to all who saw it.
“Yes,” Cirdan nodded, his voice hushed and
disturbed. “He is far stronger than he
has ever been. The girl was right; he has taken Morgoth’s power for his own. I
do not know if we have strength enough to stop him.”
“It is the End of Days my friend,” Elrond
patted him on the back. “It may not be fate that this be stopped at all. It may
be that our only role is to fight.”
”Even if it means our deaths?” Cirdan looked at the younger lord in question.
“We’ve lived long Cirdan,” Elrond met the
sea master’s gaze with a raised brow. “We have seen gods walk among us, we have
paid court to kings and wizards. We have lived well. There is no shame in its
end.”
Cirdan nodded ruefully, “I suppose that is
true.”
“If it must end,” Elrond looked ahead to
the horizon. “Can you think not of a better way to enter Mandos than in
fighting for a cause that is as great as the one we now face?”
“You always knew how to keep things in
perspective,” Cirdan broke into a grin.
“No, I cannot think of a better way to leave this world.”
“Neither can I,” Elrond shared his smile
and then added. “Still, we are not defeated, not yet at least. How many of
harpoons do we have?”
With a determined set to his jaw, Cirdan
answered firmly and with no small measure of pride. “Enough to give Sauron the
war he craves.”
Elrond nodded and continued to stare at
the smoke filled sky, growing nearer and nearer as the elven fleet left the
“Well then Cirdan,” he said with his head
held high and his eyes fixed on the road head, whatever the outcome, “in the
words of the Edain, let us cry havoc and slip the dogs of war.”