The cold ruined stone gates of Deadmans dyke rose out of the shadowed fields. Aerynnwold looked about herself, the ground was unnaturally hard even for winter and hard white trees jutted like stone pillars about the landscape. Mist swirled about her and around the open plain, it moved strangely in small tight bunches so that one moment you would have a clear view far into the distance and the next you could barely see the ground in front. Bones littered the ground, mostly animal she thought but she could not be sure. The entire place gave off an air of dread, even orcs kept their fires burning bright for fear worse things might slip among them at night. She shivered and pulled her cloak tighter about herself, how had she come to be here? It had not seemed so fell when she had been marching in rank with the other guardsmen and women. Everything about the place suggested to her that she ought to turn back, run to the warm hearth of the town and drink some warming ruby beer. Yet a strange compulsion seemed to draw her towards the ruins and she could not resist.
For a time she moved lightly across the fields, with a strange sensation of weightlessness she crossed the land faster than she thought possible. As she moved she thought she saw forms in the mist about her, men clad in rusted armour bearing the sigil of a seven pointed star or others in rough rugged furs carrying great axes. All the figures looked gaunt and grave, their faces were of young men but seemed long and drawn like faded parchment ready to crumble. Spirits of the old dead she knew now, doomed to live out their last battle til the end of days. Despite their terrifying ghostly visage she felt pity for them, they had been young boys defending their homes and their enemy poor hill-folk pushed from their hovels in the mountains to fight for a dark and terrible power. Perhaps all they had wanted was to heard goats on the hillside, see the mountain flowers bloom purple In the spring, grow old and sire many strong children. But Angmar had come to them with whip and iron crown to force them to march upon the low lands and burn them to flame.
This thought seemed alien to her, where had it come from? She despised the rough mountain folk, were they so different from the dunlendings that raided the westfold or the men that came up from the south to raid into her own homeland? Why did she feel pity for those she would happily slay in battle at the behest of the eagle guard she now fought for? Suddenly she stopped, a great ramp was before her leading up from the stone courtyard of the city to the fortress proper. This was the site of the battle she had fought a few days before, they had routed the remains of the enemy that had assaulted trestlebridge. She herself had waded through the ranks of the enemy killing at will and loving it. She looked down at the ground of the court yard expecting to see tiled stone. Blood was everywhere and about her a pile of dead men cut from many wounds, in her hand she felt the weight of a sword. She raised the blade to her self, it too was red with blood but was clear enough for her to see her own face snarling back in hatred her grey eyes wild and strange. She dropped the blade and stepped back from the body heap, she had done this? Killing men was different from killing orcs. To her stark horror the dead men began to rise and stand, they looked at her with open throats or as bodies without heads. “Whyyyyyyyyy......whyyyyy?” they lamented as the advance towards her. “We had sons, daughters and wivessssss... whyyyyyyyy?” they screamed through empty mouths and gurgled through broken lungs as they clawed at her. She cried out in agony as the dead begun to rip her skin from her in vengeance, begging for them to stop. “please no, no i'm sorry I didn't know” she whimpered in her own tongue as they devoured her...
Now she was drifting upward and away to the west. she looked down peacefully at her broken and warped body, no longer feeling associated with it. She flew through the sky far across the lands at a speed faster than anything she had ever imagined. She came to the sea and began to fly free over the endless bounds of blue. After a time she came to the ends of the world, a fantastic bridge of every colour flickered and glimmered inviting her to step upon it. Never had she seen such beauty as this ineffable bridge, in fact to call it a bridge would have made little sense other than for the deep knowing she held that it lead to somewhere far away. Somewhere with trees of gold and silver, endless rivers and utter peace. She set herself upon the bridge and was transported in a flash to a place very different indeed.
She stood in a great hall of black marble supported by great towering pillars of white. To the sides of the hall were a great many doors of different character, some seemed like those in she had seen in bree made for halflings others like the great gates she had been in awe of in her journey to Stoningland. She felt now grounded and with body again, before her stood a dark man with silver hair who looked upon her with familiar grey eyes.
“who are you?” she asked the strange yet known figure before her.
“Do you not know me aearalagos?” he replied in a deep and kindly voice.
“Nay I do not, though I feel as if I know you or at least knew you once in a different guise” she told him warily, disorientated by her strange travels.
“You did my daughter, for I am Pelafir of house arathilien and the one who sired you.”
Aerynnwold looked at him now, seeing in his face the memory of the father she had barely known but for a few loose and vague recollections. “I am dead then?” she asked serenely.
Her father laughed “No you are not dead my child, you but dream of dead men for you came close to a place that is not quite of the temporal. Thus in sleep you have come to the halls of Mandos where I wait”
Aerynnwold frowned confused for again having such a strange and vivid dream. “The halls of mandos?” she questioned.
Pelafir shook his head, his long silver hair glittering slightly.
“It is not time for you to learn of this place yet for you must journey back to the world of the living all too soon, my dear beautiful child” As he spoke he looked at her in pride and a tear came to his eye. “But I am blessed with the chance to see and speak with you, In these halls I have watched from afar in sorrow to see my failings as a man cause trouble to you but also in great happiness to see the woman you have grown into”.
Aerynnwold rushed forward to embrace him, she was flooded with the early memory of his exotic scent which had seemed so out of place among the earthly smells of their thatched home in Rohan.
“Do not turn to love in killing my daughter, you must go home to Rohan and take your brother too for a great darkness now dwells at the heart of the mark. Brave Theoden king has lost his son and in his age is turned to despair. Soon many enemies will strike at your home and without you and the friends you have found in the north little hope shall remain” Pelafir whispered this gently in to her ear as she hugged him tightly. “You must go now my sweet child and remember these words I have spoken as you wake” He released her and gently pushed her away from him.
She began to weep uncontrollably “Father I don't want to leave you, please I don't”.
But it was too late, she drifted towards one of the doors pulled by an unearthly force and back into her own bed at the guardhouse. She awoke now into the true world, shaken and haunted. Aerynnwold cried.
