Remmen Imrad (September 3010) [Saeros]

Amarië watched Saeros closely as he pressed against the earth. He had always been well versed in the songs that the rocks could speak; the songs of the solid ground, while she was more fluent in the listening of the trees and the birds. Adanedhel had taken on the gifts of both his parents. Her son had learned to listen to the vibrations of both mineral and plant at an early age. Adanedhel's sensing had surpassed her own.

As if there was anything in this wasteland to sense. There were no shudders of leaves in the wind here; no birds had she seen for days. Merely rock. Jagged, sharp rock. She looked down at her bleeding hand and then to Saeros where he was listening. She was aware of his frustration. The hopeless feeling rising in his chest... before he even looked up and spoke to her… startling was it, to begin to feel anything from him again, aside from the sweeping darkness that had covered his heart for years.

“The land does not speak to me. Strange to me that the land does not. I should not expect it to so close...yet…”

Saeros looked to her, and Amarië frowned. “The stones would only speak lamentations in this foul country.” Though the thought was disturbing; that he could hear nothing. Even if there were no songs of joy, he should be able to hear the sounds of creaking and groaning. The hatred that had filled the land so near Mordor. Amarië looked off into the fog, disturbed.

“Have a drink Amarie, you look as if you need this. Then we shall climb back down. We can not go down the otherside, too steep. Much too steep, unless you happen to have some extra length of rope hidden on you that I am not aware of.”

“If I had a length of rope, would I not have offered it on the last three cliffs?” she answered dryly, cursing again under her breath at the posed question.

Closing the few slow steps between them, Amarië reached to take the flask, sniffing at it. The smell of the mead was sweet and strong, though the miruvor was odorless, and she took only a sip. A mouthful was enough; and they had a long journey ahead of them. “Hantanyet,” she whispered to Saeros as she returned his flask. Thank you. She listened to the slosh of liquid inside. It would need to last yet a long while.

The nectar seemed to enter her blood immediately; a wash of peace, of warm breezes and the memories of music and birdsong flowing through her veins. Amarië's hand was bleeding yet, but now her mind could find some focus, and she unstrapped her bandolier, setting it and it's knives heavily upon the rocks, then began to undo the buckles at the bottom of her leather jerkin.

She gave a quick tug to the shirt she wore beneath, untucking it from her leggings, and it was not long before Amarië had unhitched another knife from her side and sliced a strip of her own clothing to wrap around her hand, swiftly tying a one handed knot to hold it in place. It would help on the climb down, though to be able to clease the wound would mark a swifter healing. It had been weeks since they had passed fresh water.

Amarië dropped her hand now; letting her fingers graze the top of Saeros' head. His hair was as filthy as hers, growing out at odd angles from the way he had trimmed it, yet in a way it felt nice beneath her fingers. Her husband, the only living thing in this wasteland. She scraped her nails across his scalp as the first breeze blew over them from the west. The same breeze they had felt the day over, blowing the misty fog over them. It felt refreshing over exposed skin, and Amarië gave pause in her doings, closing her eyes to savor it for a moment before they would need to begin the long descent. “Saeros...” she mumbled, reaching for her husband's hand, seeking a reminder of his strength. Though the Miruvor had begun to hearken her blood and relieve some of her physical exhaustion, her mind was better stilled by Saeros in these past weeks than anything else.

Even the air here felt strange and heavy now, blowing unforseen from the opposite direction. The odor was not that of rock and earth, and it ruffled the scraps of her torn shirt at her midriff.

It did not feel fresh, and it came from the wrong direction. The breeze was… burdensome… The scent of jasmine was on the air, though no flowers grew on these sordid cliffs. Jasmine, mingling with something leathery. Something old; like the skin bindings of the books from ancient days. Yet also rank, and then metallic. The smell of blood.

Before she had even reasoned over the smell of blood, Amarië was strapping her bandolier of knives back across her chest and over her hip, buckling it in place. The wind began to turn, and she could not determine from which direction the scent came now, for it seemed all around, enveloping.

On the rank swirling wind came a voice, almost inaudible, as if it were the air itself. “Nál cottonyó hela nildenyó?” It asked in a whispered gust of ancient Quenyan. Are you friend or foe?

The feel of her husband seeking her, Amarië glanced toward Saeros, taken away by the sensation within her. A feeling which she could only describe as an inner music faintly humming in her mind at the name Amariel, sound and word both of days when they were young and their cares were few. Soft and seeking. No words, but merely a feeling, as his lips pressed her knuckles.

As he drew her hand to his cheek in the misty air, “Le melin,” she whispered.

“I should have dissuaded him from joining the guard.” Amarië stepped nearer, her hand slipping from his cheek, sliding down her husband's neck. Her mind only half present for speech, still grasping at that of Saeros', even while he slipped away from her mind. She wanted to plead him to stay, but Amarië had long ceased pleading with him for such things.

“It was I who encouraged him to join,” Amarië murmured. “I told him you would be proud… I told him you would respect him for it.”

Yet there was no time to speak. There was no time to cleave to the elf before her; leather to leather as her soul was urging her to bring him comfort, and at the sound of the strange voice on the air Amarië took a step backward. Her bow strung across her back came into her hands, and smoothly an arrow from her quiver as the wind shifted. As the call came down from the sky and Saeros answered. Her eyes searched the mist, but she did not see.

Eyes closed against the touch. Touch that he had too long denied to them both, touch that he had craved. Saeros slowly pulled away from Amarië’s affection. Devotion in his eyes. A grin formed on his mouth at the edges of poured lips. He grinned at the words Le Melin and when it seemed he had withdrawn...even as he knew he should not share. He would send flooding through his thoughts to her the images of ways he wanted to show her he loved her. Images of his Amariël with her head chanted skyward and lips parted with fingers twisting wheaten tresses around her agile fingers while he kneeled before her. Quietly did he watch her expression with intense interest within his forest toned ocular lenses. Heavy was the saliva of his mouth as he swallowed it down, thick and slow.

Saeros lips pursed together with the supplied knowledge that it was she who had encouraged Adan to join the guard.

“I was proud...am proud of Ada-...Magolchil” Saeros said quietly. “I could have been no prouder as I watched him swear his service to my king, save when he drew his first breath. So tiny he was...Fit so easily in my hands. Now...tall as a willow tree. He favors you in all ways.” Saeros paused...thickened was the air.

“Nán estaina súré… súreye túla.”

Saeros’s fingers tighten around the hilt of his sword. Eyes burned fierce in the grey half light. Strength filled lenses that had fought in many of the great wars. “Do you fear the wind, elves?”

Saeros snarled to the voice on the wind “Megilchir fears nothing”. Taethedir Mablung’s son felt no fear. What fear Saeros had once felt at conflict had died two ages ago, when he was made a Marchwarden of Doriath. When he, along side Túrin Turambar, Beleg Cúthalion and his father kept the borders of Thingol and Melian’s realm free from Morgoth’s filth.

Hissing from tight lips. Music filling the air: Old and primal words. Lulling. Meant to ensare...and it would the closer it came.

Elves were simple, and these ones were already bent to her will. They must be youth to be so easily tampered with, and Ravondis laughed. A simple death would be to swift for Ravondis’ pleasure, and there were so few entertainments wandering into the Emyn Muil in these days. She flapped low enough to sight them laughing. Near enough to smell them; to smell the scent of travel; the lingering scent of the damp forests to the north. The scent of pheromones and lust hovering over them.

Had she interrupted lovers in some strange act upon the grey peaks? The thought amused her. Lovers. Minds so open to her song she had not felt in a long time, neither did they attempt to stop their ears against her lyric. Easy, too easy. And too much amusement.

Another wave of lyric she sent toward delicate, pointed ears. Ears which she could slice from their bodies and leave dangling by flesh as she listened to them scream in caverns. She continued onward, lower, singing the story of death.

“I lúme utúlie, 
Tienna narwa 
No rocco néca, 
Yan i esse ná Qualme, - 
Wilie haiyave
Númenna Wisto.”

The gusts of winds came low; black and golden hair whipped in gale force winds which she sent spiraling over the peak. She could see the glint of sword and arrow. Arrow which had clattered to the ground as she held the sight of the female.

Still singing, her claws outstretched on wings and on scarred feet. These appeared to put up no fight against her lyric, and she laughed to herself, voice rising on the breeze yet as she swooped. Claws outstretched, she grabbed, piercing through leather as blue eyes gaped up at her, and green aside. Ripping through flesh as they grasped the dark haired elf by her shoulders, curling around her and through her. Ravondis could feel flesh against the tips of her toes, and blood dripped on cloudy grey rock. Blood singing out the way the earth would not. Singing of pain and life which would soon end.

So weak was the mind of the elf against Ravondis’ song. Only one could she bear at a time. She would come back for the other. Though first, let him suffer for the loss of his mate. Amused, she lifted upward, flapping, climbing back into the air. The dark haired elf was too clouded in mind to scream for him. At the spire nearest, still in sight of the male, Ravondis made note to dash the elf against the cliff face once with a laugh before rising upward back through the grey. Back up through the fog. The bristles on her skin pitched in the winds she created as upward they flew.

The blushing sky was shining the pale rose of dawn oncoming as they broke though the upper reaches of the fog, and Amarië looked down, dazed at the grey spires which poked through in odd places, and further afield she could see the brown of the Wilderland which they had crossed stretching before them. Suddenly silent in air was the song. Vision unclouded, and Amarië looked down, hanging in air and wide eyed. Her shoulders were pierced with ache so unclouded she could scarcely breath for it, and she felt blood dripping beneath her leathers. Breath hitched in her throat; a fear she had not felt in thousands of years, and both the jasmine laced and blood stench above her driving her nearly to the brink of madness.

Saeros. Where was Saeros? Amarië gasped, her body going rigid as she looked up, and then down, and she screamed; not cognizant enough to even call his name, but a scream through the clouds nonetheless, and forcing herself to undo her clenched hands she reached for one of the knives strapped across her breast. A single motion, unthinking, she stabbed it into the ankle of the creature of nightmares.

A wretched scream filled the air. An ancient scream; a scream riddled with animalistic anger, rage, and one clawed foot released the elf, in pain. Amarië’s weight shifted now held only in the remaining foot.

“Drop the blade, fool elf,” Ravondis screeched, but Amarië could not drop it; could not let herself go to her death without trying to take the creature with her. She quickly clinched metallic blade between her teeth,her arm arched upward to the remaining foot which held her lofting, attempting to pull herself upward with all strength, groaning against the ripping in her shoulder where claws dug deeper.

“Pardon my noncompliance,” Amarië hissed as she pulled the blade from her mouth and used it as a grappling hook against what could be called the creature’s thigh, the hairy space where leg met body. Leathery body shuddered, though heavy was the armor of her skin alone, the blade forged by elves and sharp beyond recall, the bat-fell cringed, a toothsome grimace over gnarled lips, flapping, hovering, wind whirling. Amarië climbed the beast, barely feeling the throbbing in her arm as she wrenched the claws from her. Her blood was strew through the air, droplets falling to the land below, mingled with the black blood of the fell creature flying. Amarië fingers white as she clenched at the fur and hide of her under belly, as she drew up her legs and wrapped them around the midsection of the creature, stabbing her side with the blade, inching higher up the body of the creature.

Her love had kept the blades sharp for her. Blade she had not used in over seven hundred years, glistening as if she had cared for it so long on her own. Blood dripped onto her face from the wound in it’s side and it’s claws were thrashing, it’s foot reaching up trying to grasp at her, but Amarië pressed her body flush against the rank and wretched fur. The odor was enough to make her vomit, if she had held anything within her beyond the single sip from Saeros’ flask. “You need a bath,” she spat blood from her mouth as she stabbed the creature again, just beneath the wing, blade striking against a rib.

Wing curled as Ravondis shrieked, and the creature began to fall, though not for her wound, but for to gain a better reach upon the elf. Amarië clung in instinct, though she knew her life was at an end, should they go down, they would go down together, and she pitied that Saeros would see her as such. Saeros! Her beloved would find her body mangled, if there were anything left of it. She tried to will forth thoughts of Doriath, thoughts of the arms of her lover, back in the days when he truly loved her. Something to cling to as she clung to leather and wing until the end of her life.

But such was not the plan of Ravondis, and she would not come to her end so easily. The elf thought she had pierced her to her oncoming death, but merely it was Ravondis curling her wing until claw was able to flick the knife from the elf’s hands. “You cannot escape the night so easily,” the creature hissed, and with a twist and a flip in the air, Ravondis ripped the dark haired elf from her gasp, letting her fall solo, back through the fog as she swooped behind her.

Amarië could not breathe, could not think, as she fell through nothingness. Finally the scream within her clawed it’s way up her gut and through her throat, blood curdling as the shapes of the spires came into view of sky blue eyes. Her lungs emptied of air and she thought for an instant that she saw the silhouette of Saeros through the grey gloom as her body plummeted past he edge of the cliff, though just before her body was splattered upon the stone below, she was pierced as if by spear. Spears ripping into her thigh, through the muscle, squeezing tight as if to break her skin by only force. The air had left her lungs and Amarië felt the claws of Ravondis’ opposite leg searching over her body, ripping at the strap of her bandolier. The rest of her knives fell from her sight. Her belt next was torn from her and her sword fell with it, as blood ran into her head, and dripped down her face.

The elf fainted, as Ravondis lifted into the air with heavy wingbeats, this time unhindered by her terrible elvish blades. Her own wounds pained and she wished to lick them when she reached the cave, but this elf would pay for the damage she had caused. Her lover would pay for this damage. Perhaps she would torture one in front of the other. Perhaps she would let her batlings assist her, for they must be in want of fresh flesh. Nothing beyond orcs in these lands; elf would be sweet upon their tongues.

Mind riddled with thoughts of delight, Ravondis broke again into the darkening sky as stars came out above the fog and clouds.