Ilúvatar Voronwé (vajra) wrote in adusta, @ 2010-01-09 14:40:00 |
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Entry tags: | aeotha easaahae, ilúvatar voronwé, the shadow ride |
corruption (aeotha)
Boots collided with stone, a thundering herd of soldiers throwing themselves at the ruinous terrain with all the fervor of a priest who prostrates himself before the gods. Ilúvatar had abandoned the massive axe that was his trademark. Somewhere, on a lonely rotting hill in the midst of the Underdark, it sat collecting dust. Or perhaps it would be used by one of those fiends chasing them? It hardly mattered, either way. The axe was too heavy for the flight in which they currently engaged. So he'd abandoned it and in its stead used the twin axes of his people, the axes held aloft when one returned to the forest, to show that you'd returned as you'd left - a warrior for the Sylvan Elves. They were his pride. And if he died, he wanted to die with those weapons in his hand and a smile on his face.
The smile was the harder of the two.
"Keep moving!" Eibhear barked.
The soldiers were two at a time scaling a rock-face that went up a dozen feet or more. Too high to jump, Ilúvatar decided, but not short enough that the process was quick. They were moving into what Eibhear jokingly called a forest. At least, Ilúvatar hoped that he was joking. The trees were tall enough to brush one's shoulders now, ruining clear vision, making it nearly impossible to see anything in front of you for all the swaying. There was a wind, here, foul and quick, running over him like the filthy hands of the Drow themselves. You could hear them not far off. War whoops were the order of the day. A party of animals hunting the civilized. Everything in the Underdark was upside-down. If it troubled Eibhear he gave no sign. The High Elf's eyes were flint, set in a face of stone, for all that Talmus' betrayal seemed to trouble him. Control what you could control; a lesson that Ilúvatar had learned all too well.
Where had Talmus gone? Surely he didn't think he could escape his fate.
Aeotha was standing to one side, next to Pol, who was watching the antics of the soldiers with a fair amount of impatience. Her face was blank. Not that she had the same practiced indifference as Eibhear or Ilúvatar. It was a face blank because it was twisted into that state. Revulsion, fear, horror, all of them escaped through eyes that saw nothing and everything all at once. Ilúvatar knew well enough that a beautiful lady was a weakness that all creatures shared - but he still had to fight the urge to tell her that all would be well. That they would survive this. Something in him knew now that Eibhear had been telling the truth then. They were all going to die, and most likely to no purpose, though it was an honorable enough death for a servant of the king.
Ilúvatar realized that Pol had moved, was standing at his elbow, wringing his hands though he seemed not to know. Pol was no coward. He would charge into a thicket of one hundred opponents, bearing nothing but his fists, and think nothing of it. So he was not afraid, or at least, not of the Drow. If not of death, then of what? Pol had once bragged to a roomful of soldiers - with Ilúvatar among them - that he could do what he did because he had no fear which an opponent could seize upon. There was nothing in the whole of the mortal world that could tie him to this place or keep him from doing what he wanted, which was evidently to become more and more insane until at last there was nothing recognizably sane about him. In any case, he claimed not to feel fear, but here and now it was written on his face. On his chin. In the way his hands flexed without knowing why.
What did he fear?
Was it related to what he had seen?
"We gain nothing by staying and fighting," Pol told him stonily.
"Not all of us run so quickly as you," Ilúvatar replied with equal warmth.
For a moment they stared at each other with all of the hate that two creatures could quite randomly and quite perfectly summon for one another. In that same amount of time it was gone. They were left with shrieking Drow, scrabbling of hard boots, and only their own fears for company. Fears for each other and for themselves. Fears for what would become of the country they loved when they were dead. Fear that it would rot away to nothing, but more potent the fear that it would go on as it always had before. That new knights and trackers would rise and their names - so carefully traced into the sands of time - would sink through the hourglass to mark the passage of time, that and nothing more, forgotten within a generation. To say that any of them did these sorts of things to be remembered would be a lie. To say that they did not want to be remembered would also be a lie.
Ilúvatar did not know where the truth was.
"They'll make short work of this," Pol gestured with his eyes to the rockface that was still being climbed.
"We have archers above," Ilúvatar replied impatiently. "They can cover us well enough."
Nestled behind the fear, in a place that Pol would not even acknowledge, lived the hate that he carried for Talmus. It wasn't about doing what was right, or protecting his own honor. It was about finding Talmus and killing him as quickly as possible. For revenge? For justice? Pol had carried thieves and killers and liars and traitors of every stripe back to Astarii alive. Why was Talmus different? He wouldn't get any answers by asking. Something told him that Pol was not going to be forthcoming about the situation. If he wasn't nitpicking archers he'd be on to something else, and probably something just as pointless.
Ilúvatar's eyes moved back to Aeotha, which Pol took as it was intended - the fellow turned away and began to look for something constructive to do.