Torture and Truth
Narali?”
Thrarfi’s voice reached me before I realized I had stopped walking.
Kharsi sat down heavily on a low shelf of stone, shoulders tight, breathing measured, as if each breath had to be chosen. I turned back to them.
“Yes?”
“You seem distant. Is everything alright?”
“I am fine.”
He looked at me the way one studies a cracked blade, deciding whether it will hold. “Alright.”
Garfi leaned closer, her voice barely more than breath. “Was it the stones again, dear?”
I nodded. “Among other things. Yes.”
That was all I gave them. Not because I wished to lie—but because some truths bruise the hands that try to carry them.
I did not follow them deeper after that, because I knew what they were going to do to the goblins.
Not question.
Not bargain.
Torture.
I have seen pain used as a tool before. I know how easily it teaches people to mistake cruelty for justice, how quickly it turns fear into something that calls itself righteousness. I could not stand in that chamber and pretend I was only a witness.
I told myself it was the noise, the smoke, the way the stone had begun to press inward like a held breath—but the truth was simpler and worse. I did not want to watch what they meant to do. I was afraid of what it would turn them into.
I was afraid of what it was already turning Thrarfi into.
He has always carried anger like a blade kept sheathed for the right moment, but this felt different—looser, closer to the hand. Revenge is a voice that pretends to be strength. I tried to find someone who might slow him, steady him, remind him who he is when the blood is not up. I do not think I succeeded.
And Kharsi… he is hurting more than he allows anyone to see. He did not complain. He did not slow. He did not take anything for the pain. That frightened me more than if he had.
I watched them go with a sickness rising slow and cold beneath my ribs, one by one descending the broken stairs until their torchlight thinned into a trembling thread and was gone. I tried not to give shape to what followed them down. I tried to think only of stone, of breath, of the steady work of standing still.
I sat with my back near the far wall of the cavern, near the wind stair that ascended toward Dolven View, where water washed lies away. The rock there was cold and dry and old enough not to care what names were spoken over it.
After a while, I felt the dog before I saw him.
Krok settled beside me without sound, his long ears stirring faintly with each quiet breath, a soft rhythm against the hollow stillness. He did not look at me. He did not ask anything of me.
He only stayed.
He was grey around the muzzle, eyes too old for his body. The dog pressed his head against my shoulder like he had always known me. Not to be gentle. Just to be there.His steadiness was a gift.
Ronhus followed not long after.
We spoke of small things at first. Why he had come on the expedition. Rohnus joked that Krok is a “Dúnadan dog,” because no creature should live that long unless it has learned the patience of Men who outlast their own stories.. The dog, who had once belonged to someone he loved and lost. It was grounding. For a little while, the sound of what was happening deeper in the tunnels faded to something distant and unreal, like thunder behind a mountain.
When it was over—when the goblins were dead and their information taken—the company gathered and we all left. It was several days too long a stay for me. I wondered what the others thought.
The Guard Captain. Foreman Mögr listened to our report with the expression of a dwarf who had buried too many friends to be surprised by anything the dark produced. He thanked us briefly, then spoke of watches to be set and supplies to be moved, of a hall filled with mirrors that would need guarding.
Duty, layered over grief.
The others wished to stop first, to pay respects where the dead still had names. Balin’s tomb lied just to the north and we needed to pass by anyway.
After a few steps down the corridor I glanced down the tunnel and shivered.
“The air is unsteady here.”
Thrarfi’s eyes had found their warmth again when he looked at me, and his voice softened with it, but it did not chase away the cold gathering under my ribs.I could see in his eye the worry for me his self-doubt as he nodded, assuring me “We wont be long Nara.”
Ronhus stayed back, too I noticed, but I could not ask him why. He face did not offer any clue, it was closed as a tombstone.
I could not, because the whispers were waiting—not voices yet, only sound. A thin, sliding breath threaded through the seams of the stone, soft and wet and patient, like something tasting the air where my name should be. It came from no single place, only from the narrow spaces where the rock had learned to pretend it was whole.
With it came the pressure. Not weight exactly, but the promise of it. The air tightened around my ribs, and the mountain felt as though it were leaning inward, testing how much of me would yield. It was the sensation of standing beneath a stone that had already decided to fall, waiting only for permission to move.
No words formed. No meaning crossed into thought. There was only intent—the shape of something learning where I was weakest.
I knew then that whatever waited beyond that door could not reach me yet. It needed the space. It needed me inside it.
I could not prove it was a lie, but truth does not practice how to break you.
So I did not step forward. I told them I would wait, and I prayed that nothing would follow them inside.
I stayed far back, where the light from their torches was only a dull smear on the rock. My heart beat like something small trapped in a wall.
When Thrarfi emerged and joined Rohnus, I did not walk to them.
I rode.
Past them—too fast, breath torn from my chest, shame burning hotter than fear. Only when I heard Thrarfi call my name did I slow.
“We are ready to move on, Narali,” he said, almost in passing, because I had not truly slowed.
I did not stop until I reached the light. The sudden brightness stung my eyes.
“Are you alright?” Adonneinel asked, concern sharp in her voice. “She looks pale.” She added to the others.
“I know not.” I answered because I did not feel alright.
She stepped closer, studying the color draining from my face.
“I don’t know how to tell them apart yet,” I said, helpless.
“No… better she explain it, if she prefers.” Kharfi stated, his voice sounded tired and unsure.
I did not blame what he did not say, I for how would I explain this to anyone?
“I hear things,” I said quietly. “Voices. Sometimes they make no sense. Other times they are personal.”
“I see…” Someone answered, I was not even sure who.
“All gifts need honing, Nara. You will learn.” Kharsi said quietly and I wished then he was right.
“It happens often when I am with your company.” Ronhus said quietly,
“Moria is taking its toll…” added Thrarfi.
I tried again to explain myself, “Some places are bad… some good. The stones. They speak to me. It is our gift. I did not know I had it.”
“A gift and a curse… Ronhus said seeming to understand. “Do you mean you are listening to the ... stones ?' You will learn to control it.”
Adonneniel offered me a small bottle, pale gold like a ring shimmering.
Her voice was gentle. Yet her eyes were full of pity.
I drank. I thanked her. I did not tell her I did not want to be handled like a wound that had learned to speak. I would not ruin her act of kindess.
As conversations faded, I realized the hall itself was different.
No pressure. No hunger.
Only memory.
Lives once lived. Grief without hands.
I understood then: lies push and demand. Truth only tells of what has been, and asks nothing but to be heard.
The knowledge did not make me lighter, but it made me steadier. Even the others seemed to breathe more easily, though none of them said why.
The stone did not make me brave.
It made me certain.
I am not afraid I will harm them anymore—not the way I was before, counting my breaths, waiting to follow a wrong step into the dark.
But safety is not comfort.
I still feel wrong. Useful, yes. Necessary. But wrong in the way a crack in a wall is wrong—visible, permanent.
Being seen costs me more than I know how to explain.
Not because I do not want it. I do. I have wanted it longer than I have known how to name the wanting. But standing where others can look at me, measure me, rely on me—it is like learning to breathe in a different gravity. Every kindness leaves a mark. Every worry finds a place to rest its hands.
It is not only Thrarfi and Kharsi, though they are close enough that I feel their silences before they speak. It is everyone. I hear the tight places in voices, the uneven steps, the careful pauses where pain is being hidden. I am only a bard, and yet their stories lean toward me as if I were something steadier than I am.
I do not want to fail them.
I do not want to be the place where hope sets its weight and then slips.
So I hold what I can, quietly, the way one holds a lamp in wind—not because I am strong, but because I am afraid of what happens when the light goes out.
It costs more than I name.
I have been unseen for so long that vanishing became a kind of shelter. I learned how to make myself small even inside my own thoughts, how to leave rooms without moving.
It is my worst habit.
And breaking it still feels like standing in light without armor.
Later, when the other returned from viewing the Endless Stair, I found Thrarfi alone.
“Thrarfi?”
“Yes?”
“I want you to know I am all right.”
“I want to believe you,” Thrarfi said, “but I see how you draw away from the stone… from us.”
“Try not to worry.”
“She is strong, uncle.” Kharsi interjected.
“I do not want her to suffer. Aye. But I wish she did not need to be strong.” Thrafri admits his voice saying he felt to blame.
“Suffering is like breathing to me.” I answered, a simple truth.
“Check your lungs, then.” Thrafi added his humor shining through the heaviness we all felt.
“May you find joy as easily as breath, Nara.” Kharsi added, his sunny outlook always like a breath of fresh air.
“You know without it, I would not be who I am.” I said trying to be honest.
“I hope one day you suffer less,” Thrarfi said quietly. “You deserve happiness.”
He reached for me, then hesitated.
I stepped forward.
Kharsi pulled me in first, quick and fierce, as if afraid I might change my mind.
Garfi came next, her arms gentle but certain, her cheek warm against my hair.
Thrarfi closed around us last, careful as if I were something already cracked, his hand steady between my shoulders.
“Come here,” he murmured.
“I needed that,” I said, and meant more than the moment.
For a breath, held between them, I was not a crack in the wall.
Only a stone that had learned how to bear weight.
