Three days after Coruhuron and Hravanis part, he to return to their charges, she to lead the Warg Riders away from them.
Close to midnight, deep within Dunland, the Gravenwood.
Orcish screaming was aggravating. The creature lurched toward her, flailing it's butcher knife of a sword in nothing less than madness and yelling it's empty curses. Hravanis was annoyed. She was too bored to speed her walk and too disinterested to even brace for a fight. She couldn’t even bring herself to fake effort. She hated their voices and their smell and this was the third day of her pursuit and hunting had never been her favourite pastime but now it might as well be the sound of metal against metal for how tedious she found it.
The orc ran face first into her grip, her powerful fingers gouging into it's blackened cheeks as she finally gagged it's hollering with her palm. It didn't matter that it's flailing cut a line of blood down her thigh and she couldn't even find the inspiration to look into it's gaze and take pleasure from it's abject fear. With a careless lash of her arm and flick of her wrist she simply crushed it's skull against the tree beside her, feeling rather than seeing how the bones shattered against her grip, like glass. Dull.
And the reason for her spiritlessness was so mundane it annoyed her even more. She was just tired. The young were draining. Coruhuron's recklessness and badgering was wearying. Aecthel's sharp questions were tiresome. New acquaintances required so much energy. And now she was alone, wounded, and struggling to find the effort required to give a damn about any of it. It was an expected consequence, a familiar malaise, but one that still put her in a foul mood.
As she shook the ichor from her hand and glanced about the carnage of her own little ambush, she had reason to be grateful that her irritation had a healthy direction. Dead Uruks, dead wargs, dead orcs. No matter how frustratingly simple the task was it was good to see it done, alike to the satisfaction of an organised armoury or clean dishes. At least her anhedonia had not spread so far just yet.
She tossed her head and was halfway through a weary sigh before a sudden sharp bark echoed through the canopy and she snapped her gaze to an orc who, apparently, had been a little late to the event. It was different to the rest, standing at the edge of her massacre, snarling and spitting through it's teeth as it's eyes spun in fear, struck petrified to it's place.
It was a reedy creature, all repulsively lean muscle. Bands of metal and iron-wire stitching seemed all that was holding it together and it's skin was a blotchy grey and polluted brown.
"D-d-d-d-drok-Bujar, Dru-Matum! Dru-Gorgol!" It shrieked, breaking whatever spell held it to turn and flee. Or try too. It took no time or effort for Hravanis to bend to the ground and find a weapon. The stone that struck the back of it’s head sent it crashing soundly to the forest floor, doomed to hopelessly try and crawl away before Hravanis was upon it, dragging it to it’s back and dropping a heavy knee onto it’s chest. There was little sense to be made of it’s black speech babbling until she had a warning hand around it’s eerily thin neck.
“Gorgol is an old name of mine.” She speaks low, more as a statement than for the sake of curiosity. Still, it draws something from her captive, hissed through frothing teeth. “Raabt survives. Survived it all! Survived Gorgol! Can again, will again!” And it surged to thrash and struggle under her grip, to claw uselessly at her leg and torso before a well controlled squeeze of it’s throat stilled it once more.
“Was this the last of the pack?” She asked, her tone monotonous, her gaze utterly implacable. She had a duty and she would fulfil it no matter how tedious she found it. Raabt’s jaw trembled, its momentary confidence dying by the second though it still held strong for now. And Hravanis had no patience, her temper worn to a single thread, begging to snap and toss away this chance in favour of more bloodshed.
She surged in close, her own teeth bared, the light in her eyes a harsh and dreadful glow as her throat grated in a guttural growl.
“Gashn! izg zuub olkurz ob dug grish drûsh jut,” the threat already turned Raabt a vile shade of green but Hravanis’ strangle hold tightened and she spat on, “Izg shaplag kraat Raabt agh runk-ul ishi prrall, tram-ub tarthur maath fraut ob koh .”
It’s trembling was pitiful. Reduced to a whimpering mess with but a few words, a disgusting and cowardly thing, as they all were. And she could take no pleasure in it’s terror today, not even sadism could grasp her attention and she couldn’t be bothered to try.
At the very least the orc did not hold it’s silence any longer.
“Raabt is last! Raabt the survivor, always last! Gorgol caught him but Gorgol is too late! Raabt already told the bird, yes! Told that the Gorgol is all alone! No friends to help! Saruman-fool will be the end for Gorgol, burn bite gnash chew, bones into the pits to feast, revenge, reven-!”
She ripped it’s jaw from it’s skull in her haste to silence the babbling, letting it gurgle and bleed out into the forest floor. At the very least, her job was done.
Nearer to Morning, now closer towards the Gap of Rohan.
A little time later and Hravanis found herself leaning her back against a rock in the middle of a softly flowing river. The icy cold water slowly soaked away the ichor staining her skin and clothes, but that was the most effort she could put towards her own wellbeing. Her Hroa was strong but her Fea was weary.
She, again, had cause to be grateful for her solitude. She absolutely refused to allow anyone to see her this way, to even for a moment consider this her natural state. She had no time for those Eldar who drowned themselves in the apathy of Age. As if care and passion had ever been anything but a choice, as if they could have seen all the things there were to see, felt everything there was to feel. Sluggards, cowards. So what if it got harder? It was still their responsibility to try, not flee west at every discomfort.
Even animals did not abandon their homes so recklessly.
But that made these moments even more unbearable. To have to look into the sky and tell herself it was beautiful, that she still enjoyed the sound of running water, that the slowly oozing bite to her shoulder hurt, that these things mattered at all. She knew she had move again before she was discovered, but the lack of a clear objective in her mind meant she had nothing to heave her from this paralysis. Stars… what had triggered it? She had been wearied by elven society before, dealt with more than her fair share of reckless soldiers and curious children before. What was it about these ones?
Perhaps… they were too familiar.
Coruhuron hounded after battle like a being possessed, as though he had no mind for anything but vengeance, a fury so potent he had no care for himself and little to spare for others. Just ancient enough for the flames of the fight to be all that can grasp him, not yet wise enough to know how to change. Dark, terrible, burning, sadistic, his loyalty all that binds him… yes, she recognised that all too well. He seemed like both the embodiment of her younger years, and a consequence of them.
She had been him, once. And it was a tiring to remember it.
And Aecthel, eyes so bright and curious, a heart full of valour and with such a vast capacity for compassion. Young enough to rightfully demand the world be better, to still believe that her efforts and the efforts of others could do just that despite all the hardship and ugliness she had already endured. Aecthel was alike to… a silhouette, as though Hravanis was seeing the ghost of someone long dead. Recognised, but not remembered. A child she had lost so long ago but whom now looked upon her with betrayal and empathy both and asked ‘How could you do this to us?’
She had been her once. And it was painful to not remember it.
The forest about her creaked through her introspection, the mist of the morning gathering in the base of her little valley as birds chirruped their dramatics. Cold water stung at her slowly numbing skin and she sat so still that a shoal of minnows peaked from their hideaways to come and encircle her fingers and pick at the gash down her thigh.
“Shall we mourn here deedless forever,” She murmured to herself, Quenya slipping from her tongue as easily as the water passed its stones, “a shadow-folk, mist-haunting, dropping vain tears in the thankless…” a small and sudden smirk, her fingers playing a moment in the rushing water, “river?”
She gave a small sigh. The revelation of what she had perhaps already known, but never spoken into reality, seemed to have lifted a little weight from her chest. Knowing the ‘why’ always made the ‘what’ a far more manageable burden to bear. She glanced down to her new finned friends, their manner seeming slower suddenly, more focused upon her than a moment before. A dozen silver eyes stared up at her unblinkingly, flitting here and there, but staying in the circle of her palm.
Her mother tongue ever had such an effect upon the good creatures of the world, a small tether that still held the Noldor to this Middle Earth. Small, but important, and enough for her.
“Though the road be long and hard, the end shall be fair, after all.” She hummed, watching the fish dance at the cadence of her speech even as she wondered how they could hear it beneath the water.
And so Hravanis took a deep and bolstering breath and set to work. She resolved not to leave her seat until she loved the sound of water, was curious of minnows and yet disliked the pain of biting teeth enough to flee from both.
Translations:
Drok-Bujar, Dru-Matum! Dru-Gorgol!
Bastardized black speech meaning: The demon-knight, dreaded-death, dreaded-butcher!
Gashn! izg zuub olkurz ob dug grish drûsh jut
Bastardized black speech meaning: Speak, or I will drain your body of it’s filth blood and fill it with water.
Izg shaplag kraat Raabt agh runk-ul ishi prrall, tram-ub tarthur maath fraut ob koh.
Bastardized black speech meaning: I will rinse away Raabt and hang it low in a Holly Tree, it will be raped/defiled/ravaged by sweet roots for the rest of time.
((Translations are extended since black speech has no extensions, 'I will rinse away Raabt' would be 'Raabt rinse away' but with a not-english-compatible future tense suffix. Also 'you' has been changed to 'it' here, Hravanis is not verbally acknowledging the Orc as an individual.
I absolutely do not know Black Speech and this was more of an effort to make the text sound accurate more than be accurate. Still I ended up putting a little more effort into it than I meant too so I hope it reads ok!))
