Feud

Thanks: First to all the loyaldersders who enjoy this story, most especially reviewers!
Second, to my absolutely fantastic beta, Sarah, [she is the best!] whose careful attention and insight improves the quality of this story immensely!

Chapter 36: Agar Mael [Blood Lust]

Legolas hastened through the treetops, using all the speed he could ma and and exerting as much strength as he dared to bolster his connection to Tawar as he moved from branch to branch amid the canopy. He desperately needed to know what direction the spiders would come from. {Where is the largest nest? How many are in it?} He needed to attract the adults' attention by heading straight for it and their precious egg cocoons, knowing this was the only way to deflect the main body of the colony from overwhelming his friends in the ruined clearing behind him.

He let the trees guide his flight, and was thankful the Greenwood was able to do so, given the black plague of shadowy poison slowly seeping through root and rhizome. Yet the Dark Lords were not expecting him to seek out a center of evil and no move was made to obscure the lair of the arachnids. He could feel the reciprocation of corruption in the trees housing the spiders; these blighted hardwoods stood out like glaring beacons of unadulterated hatred for all that Tawar represented. It would have been impossible not to discern these cancers in his forest, he realized, even if Tawar was totally incoherent and unreachable.

There was not enough time to prepare an adequate defense. He was still tired, though the sense of Mithrandir's quiddity was still strong in his soul. His whole being hurt, though that was the manageable aching he now recognized as a constant in his existence, and he had not the benefit of his archer's skill or the distance that would accord him from fangs and spinners. Those arrows, he knew, would be needed in the battle with the Orcs, and he would have no opportunity to stop and make more if he used them up against the loathsome arachnids. He would have to make contact with his foes, and he shuddered in revolted aversion to the idea of touching the disgusting abominations.

{Not enough time!}

What could he posy doy do to fend off the wretched beasts and keep them from killing him? Strange, had he not but hours ago desired such an impossible situation and thus an end to the unbearable debacle that was the remnant of his life? Now he needed to retain that vitality as long as was tenable to give his friends the chance to survive their inadvertent association with and assimilation into his macabre world. It was an irony he did not appreciate even slightly. He renewed his determined commitment to stay the Dark One from stealing these two from him, from Arda, convinced on a deeply instinctive level that their survival was paramount. With no realistic defense he decided to perpetrate an open frontal assault right into the heart of the arthropods' territory.

{My territory.}

He knew where the nest was now; Tawar sent him the precise location in a clear image. It was a massive conclave of draping nets and heavy sacs stuffed with the developing broods of Ungoliant's excremental offspring. How he longed to destroy them all! With a wild surge of anger and hate he changed course and raced for it, letting the branches carry his venomous resentment of the gruesome infestation to col colony's inhabitants.

{I am coming!}

At this instant he felt them, lurking in weighty vigilance among the branches below, and he smiled. They had no way of comprehending what was to befall them, for little certainty did he have himself.

{Fair enough, come and see if you can bind me then! I will not easily be made fodder for your young!}

He had no leeway to plan or plot, to build traps or kindle fire, and so he depended on just his raw energy and repugnance for the creatures. The beasts were used to him firing arrows from afar, sending their nests into flaming debris as the unborn young boiled into smoky remains and putrid odors. They expected him to flee to find a new position and launch more white heated darts upon them, not to grapple with them by sinew and blade.

{Let them learn what it is like to have a Wood Elf upon them!}

Dagger in hand he silently hurtled down onto his first victim, landing on its black and grey mottled back and wrapping his longs tgs tightly around its bulbous body. He recognized the arthropod from a previous encounter some years before by the scarred remains of a visionless eye in a seared and empty socket. This one had tasted him long ago, sinking its snapping beak into his calf and injecting enough of its vile venom to sicken him for nearly a month of days. It craned its compounded glare upon him and tried to bring its filthy mouth into range of his shins. A sneer of feral ferocity graced the wild elf's features as he drove the blade through the join of the thorax and the head. No sound could the creature make as it went limp in the leaves, its own web holding it firm, and Legolas leaped off and up and flung himself upon his next target.

This one saw him and sent a stream of its silken essence toward the Tawarwaith, but the Elf was far faster than the beings realized, having never fought him at close range, and he was gone from the spot before the spun constraint landed. The spider snapped off the thread and turned to find him in its multi-faceted eyes, only to feel the dirk bite into its belly and slit it wide, emptying its vital organs into the dirt with a noisy, wet splatter.

The whole colony was aware of him now, and all but ten turned to give chase and surround the object of their dire abhorrence. Long silken streamers of web fibers sailed soundlessly across the open spaces, attempting to close him in, but Legolas predicted that and scrambled to move up and down, over and under the sticky extrusions, never trying to flee at all. The spiders were surprised by the new tactic, and paired up to work against him.

And the strategy cost them much, for the creatures could not get their webs to work to their advantage at this close range. They snared the branches and the tree trunks; they snagged each other's limbs and oculi, unwittingly creating a crossfire of the adhering threads.

The wild elf was like a phantom of air rather than a being of substance, moving just a hair's breadth to either side of their silky cage's clasp just before the emanations landed. While they thus entangled each other, Legolas wove among the spiders, slipping between the handicapped legs and blinded eyes to jab and stick them, rip and tear them, cleaving away their existence piece by piece.

The forest fought with their champion in the same manner as their devious counter parts to the south had worked against him. The arachnids found they spent as much time using their web to save themselves leg-snapping falls as they did trying to wrap Tirn-en-Tawar up, for the trees willingly allowed their branches to k frk free from bark and bole to cast the spiders down.

Soon the creatures' overzealous reliance on their natural weaponry had created a massive stinking mess of both loosely fluttering and secured webs that worked to shield the Wood Elf, blocking any new spinnings' path as he scampered from limb to branch in the spaces between the strands.

His timing was exquisite, and even in his haze of hostile malevolence, Legolas exulted in the finesse of his reactions and the accuracy of the slightest of of his wrist and blade. There was something gloriously primal in the release of his dark and dreadful desire to kill, a magnificence in the righteous flow of rage and anger flooding his soul at the thought of his friends' endangerment, and sublime surety in the sensation of the blade sliding through the rigidly resilient carapaces, spilling out the spiders' poisonous liquors to mix with the duff.

He relished it.

The brutal engagement sent him a renewed surge of vigor and strength, as though he was sucking it right out of his enemies' essential share of living energy, much as the spiders would have allowed their brood to siphon off his own vital juices had they captured their nemesis.

Unceasingly his blade stabbed and stuck them, slicing and decapitating, dismembering and blinding them. The forest warrior was cruel, hacking off spinners and then taunting the spiders to come for him, only to leap away from snapping fangs even as his clever immortal hand flicked the deadly mithril gleam behind the leering arachnids' eyes and snapped through their twiggy necks.

Legolas disregarded the hours passing as the struggle ensued, sparing no effort to consult the position of Ithil's face to learn that he had been killing for four hours now. He lost count of how many had fallen to his dagger's determined dance of destruction, and he heard the spiders give him new names. No longer merely Ungol Dagnir [Spider Bane], the identity he had held among them for all these years of exile, he increased in dread importance and manifested in their foul tube-shaped hearts an unbridled panic such as the species had not felt before this night.

A fell litany swept through them in their language of clicks and shrills, and entered back into the twisted trees, flowing thence through their unholy connection to the Dark Lords far to the south: Rûth-en-Arda, Fear Gurth, Ilfirin Coth, Eithad Balch [Wrath of Arda, Death Spirit, Undying Foe, Cruel Stab].

The spiders at last halted their unsuccessful attempts to corner their enemy and lapsed motionless around him. Though he was ringed with nine arachnids, he was not to be captured thus, and they chattered in apprehensive confusion. Even when they succeeded in gluing one of their strings to his flesh, he used his bitter blade and scraped it off, caring not to part with a layer or two of his hide to free himself. When a strand had caught his long tresses, he had not appeared to notice that the momentum of his motion caused the entangled clump to be ripped away still rooted to his scalp. He did not seem to feel pain, he displayed no fear, he did not give in to fatigue though the pace of their attacks was anything but apathetic. The spiders tried to reorder their evil-spawned thoughts.

Legolas balanced lightly on the slender limb, panting mightily with the effort the battle was costing him, yet refused to bow to the demands of his body for rest and for water. He looked at the many-eyed creatures and laughed to know their new names for him, briefly wondering in the back of his awareness how he had made the translation.

A new idea blazed like lightening across his brain and in his gluttony for gore he acted upon it, launching himself with a soul-stilling shriek upon the nearest beast at his left. He grabbed its front leg, covered with wiry hairs, and sliced it free, tumbling himself over in mid-air and then lashing out with the severed leg he held tight in his hand. The spiny hooks caught onto the webbing strands draped all round among the branches and he used the new anchor point to swing his body in a wide arc that allowed him to kick one spider away while hacking another free of its silk organ.

Legolas dropped the leg and plummeted down onto a third beast's back, replaying his initial attack, and viciously hewed it to pieces beneath him. With a sneering expletive he hoisted up and shoved the remains into the furious stream of web-silk streaming toward him, and used the snared body like a weighted pendulum, riding it away to a nearby branch even as two more spun fibers darted through the air.

He felt a thread sear his back, and with no hesitation slipped the dripping dagger into his own flesh and cut the strand away. He was no longer surprised that he barely felt the laceration; he had learned a thing or two about pain over the last few days. The warmth of the blood oozing down his spine he welcomed, having discovered the threads could not stick to the fluid.

The Tawarwaith chose another casualty and raced across the branches for it, darting through the holes in the matted mesh, but was disappointed to see the spider send a long stream of ropy silk into a neighboring tree and use it to haul itself to escape. It kept up its retreat, casting and reeling lines from tree to tree, and the cowardly action spurred like behavior in its brethren. Within seconds the seven remaining arachnids were in demoralized retreat, fleeing as Legolas screamed curses at them and gave chase.

The feral immortal let them go after he had haunted their eight-heeled flight for an hour's length of Ithil's remaining regency, overjoyed to give them a small sense of what he had felt when pursued relentlessly by death's advocates for nights on end.

Legolas could not help his ecstatic grin and gave a victorious shout that followed after them. He cursed them in the names of Yavanna and Aulë, and demanded Oromë come and flush them out and finish the night's work, saying he had grown bored with them and wished to return to his friends' companionship. Long would his words be remembered, and the night be marked by their species as a catastrophic defeat, and for this Legolas rejoiced.

As he made his way back through the branches toward the clearing he could not suppress his exhilaration, and began singing into the approaching day as Anor crept near the east and paled the depths of inky night. Thus he returned to his companions, who heard him long before he leaped down from the trees.

Aragorn grinned hugely and sheathed his sword as he looked upon Gandalf's equally beaming countenance.

"It seems we have all been victors this time!" he said.

"I never doubted it!" Gandalf lied with high humour and the Man laughed at the falsehood, for they had both worried through the evening's last hours, yearning to know how their friend fared.

They listened now to his song of gloating fulfillment, which he seemed to be inventing as he went along, and called out the chorus to underscore the fair voice. But as soon as the elf landed on the ground and came to them, their words froze in the backs of their mouths and their eyes grew wide with horror.

Legolas was a ruinous mess of self-inflicted stabs and scrapes, required to keep free from his more numerous adversaries, and he was limping on a terribly swollen ankle that he scarcely seemed to feel. He was painted with an unholy coating of elven blood streaked through hideous splashes of slick spider slime. When he closed within arm's length, they actually drew back a step, for the fearsome light of his killing spree was still within his gleaming eyes, and it was a deeply troubling perversion of the normally wholesome brightness of his clear blue gaze. He stopped his chanting lyrics as he saw their timorous demeanor and looked in confusion from one to the other.

"Legolas!" said Gandalf, barely whispering the word.

"What has happened?" demanded the elf. "What is this expression of dread?" He swayed a bit, weary beyond his ability to grasp, for he was too drunk on the power of his butchering. Neither of the two travelers could bring themselves to answer, uncertain what they could say to him that would get through to his mind in his state of over elevated emotions. Legolas glanced down at his leg with a frown as a small twinge from it caught his attention, and then hobbled over to examine their own trophies of the night's sorties.

"Not a poor number for your first time against raug o tail-telyth [eight-footed demons]!" he praised them and kicked one of the rotting carcasses with delighted viciousness, laughing upon hearing the squishy crunching of the shattered soft-shelled beast. He turned back and scrutinized his friends' appearance and laughed again, a cutting sound edged in exhaustion.

"Oh, Mithrandir!" he cried out in distress and reached out to brush his fingers against the singed place in the Istar's beard"You"You two look a bit bedraggled for your efforts! We must retrieve the horses and find some clean water to wash in, and no doubt you have extra clothing with you. It just amazes me how much stuff everyone drags about with them! Those Noldor were the worst for it I have ever seen! Do you know, Erestor had two spare sets of clothing with him?"

"Erestor!" Gandalf and Aragorn exclaimed together, but Legolas ignored them, drifting towards the remains of the firewall to examine it critically.

"Now this was surely a great risk to my home! How do you dare take such liberties in someone else's lands?" he scolded with a scowl. When his comrades made no answer he turned to look upon them again, still puzzled, and then stooped down to massage the ankle, burning much more hotly with stinging cramps theforefore. He straightened and motioned for the two to follow along. "Come on and we shall find the animals and see if we can convince them to carry such smelly and filthy riders as you!"

He ambled unsteadily off and the Istar and the Man exchanged worried looks. They decided not to interfere with the Wood Elf until he lost the chilling ferocity that shone in his eyes, and trailed after him, each hefting a pack as they passed, and Aragorn took up the elf's weapons, which he had walked by without a second glance. That more than any other act indicated the unnatural diversion of his mind, for it had always been his first instinct to seek these tools and keep them close. The two travelers hoped he would walk off his excitement and return to the manner that they knew to be his true character.

It took better than an hour before the elf descended from his giddy heights of euphoric blood lust. The horses' refusal to let him near triggered his return from the grip of dark delight and forced him to cast out the recurring images of his lengthy battle. The beasts were obviously as terrified of him as they would be of the spiders, or indeed of any Orc, and that disturbed the elf mightily.

Legolas became quiet and sober, and succumbed to an encompassing gloom equal to the magnitude of his former exaltation. The burdens of his wounds began to cry for his attention and at last the bone-draining weariness engulfed him completely. He sat down with a groan, folding his legs and gingerly cradling his injured ankle atop the opposite knee. When he leaned against the trunk of the oak his back flared up angrily as the bark pressed into the raw wounds from his own dagger. He had to hunch forward over his lap and bowed headhead, suddenly ashamed to see what his friends' eyes must reflect of him.

He had always experienced heightened exhilaration during and just following a fight, even when in the patrols. This night's sense of grotesque enjoyment in the destruction he had wrought was a more potent thing, a feeling of a black craving that he had never known within himself before, fully sated and slaked. He could smell the mixture of his and the arachnids' blood all over him and suddenly felt overwhelmed with nausea. Fighting to suppress the gurgling upsurge of bitter gall, Legolas leaned over until his head nearly rested on his injured leg and gripped his midsection tightly.

Aragorn had been waiting for this and was already sorting through hisplieplies to mix up a remedy for the gut wrenching queasiness he was certain would follow. He had known Men to react this way, carried away in battle's blood letting only to feel fouled and inhuman once it was done. He had seen Elladan suffer the same, transformed by his desire to avenge his mother's assault, then as the carcasses cooled, crying out that she would never know him for the delight he found in such sport.

Unable to overpower the need to purge, Legolas hastily unfolded his limbs and crawled behind the tree as the vomiting commenced, and Gandalf went to help him, though there was little he could do when he got there. He had thought to rub the elf's shoulders and back, but the skin was still oozing blood from several raw patches and he dared not touch him.

There was little enough in their friend's stomach anyway, so the sickness was over quickly and he dragged himself back to his place by the tree. Cautiously Legolas raised his eyes to look at them, dreading to see their disgust and fear, yet he had to know if they truly despised him, and somehow he hoped they could forgive his new found flaw. He met first Mithrandir's age-old eyes and found there only worry and kindness, and relief flushed away the remains of the killing feverm him his brain. When he looked at the Man, a warm smile of understanding graced the Ranger's rugged face, and he held out a cup with something wet in it.

"You will find this will help your insides settle down," he said encouragingly. "I have to make it for my brother every time he goes on an Orc raid." Aragorn spoke these words without thinking of their consequences, for he had kept back his relationship to Imladris, but the reference was too vague and meant nothing to Legolas. He took the medicine and swallowed it down without complaint. It was not unpleasant, peppermint being a principle component, and it did help ease the churning.

"Now then, I think the horses will know you again! Call to them, Legolas, for we do need fresh water to clean up those cuts!" said Gandalf and helped the wild elf stand, for the ankle would not support him any longer. He did not even need to call them aloud, for the bay and the palomino were already ambling back towards their riders and merely blew out loudly through their velvet muzzles, protesting against the strong odors the three travelers emitted. Their friend was back to normal and they willing allowed the three to mount up.

As before, Legolas and the horses knew the course to tread and the Man and the Maia accepted the role of passengers. There was no trail of any kind that they could see and the towering boles stood in forbidding ranks, a maze of cramped closeness that had the animals zigzagging all around, it seemed to the elf's two friends. With the sun up the outpouring of light from Anor at least made the direction obvious as they progressed further east with every step. It would appear the enchantment was still in effect.

An hour's walk brought them to a low spot and the trees changed in species to cypress and hemlock, as these were happy to have their feet thoroughly wet, and they ringed the fen. The spongy ground disquieted the animals, though, and they refused to go on when tea-colored water oozed up around their hooves with each step.

"We will have to walk from here," Legolas sighed, "but it is for the best. Some of the can can get quite a firm grip on one and I have not the energy to pull the horses out. There is a deep pool at the heart of the bog, but the way is tricky if you are not elf-kind. I am not sure how heavy a creature these step-stones of fern and mold will support. I know of no other water source near-by, however."

"Well I suppose if there is nothing else, we must try," said Aragorn with little enthusiasm.

"At least no Orcs can get through to the center," commented Gandalf, and he got down first in order to assist Legolas. The two hobbled forward with the Man behind.

"I would guess there is a reason you do not just use some sort of magic to dry up a nice solid bridge for us?" Aragorn complained. Gandalf muttered something under his breath and Legolas laughed, looking back at the Ranger in amusement.

"If he did as you say, he would ruin this place for the creatures that do like it this way and make it their home!" he said. Aragorn bowed his head.

"Fair enough. I fail to see how a few less newts, frogs, and snakes would be a harmful thing, however!"

"It would be more than that; the whole forest would change!" the elf exclaimed. "These trees only like this sort of spot, and some birds will only nest in those very trees, for here the supply of insects is high. Without those newts and frogs, maybe we would not be able to abide the flies and gnats so well, while the snakes keep the amphibians from overproducing!"

"Oh come now, one bog drained would not make an end of the Greenwood, Legolas."

"I did not say it would end, I said it would change."

"Everything changes; it cannot be stopped!"

At that comment the wizard and the elf both looked back at their friend with such solemn and sorrowful expressions that the Man caught his breath and suddenly felt a huge fool. Had he just been lecturing immortals on the nature of Arda? Between them these two had likely seen more in the way of alteration than was recorded in all the histories of human life to date.

They had made their way through splashing and sucking steps to the heart of the little depression, and a small black-water pool did indeed grace the site. The old cypress trees knelt right in the liquid, stretching out their long limbs across the water's surface; a plane so motionless it might have been solid, a huge mirror reflecting the moss draped branches and knobby gnarled knees jutting up among the rushes at the edges of the pool. It was so still and silent that it almost seemed a place apart, removed from the regular realm of the forest's noisy wildlife altogether. It was a calming kind of quietness, and the beauty of the place was undeniable.

Aragorn did not allow the enchantment of the serene environment to deter him long, however, for he was eager to get cleaned up and tend to the elf's injuries. He found a reasonably solid patch of land and set down his pack and Legolas' weapons and motioned for the wizard to bring him over. He cautiously lifted the elf's long hair to see the scrapes and Legolas winced as the pared patch of scalp was exposed. The Man and the Maia both wrinkled up their faces in sympathetic grimaces.

"This water will probably burn a bit, for it is filled with the fermenting decay from the leaves and ferns. Nonetheless, you need to get in it and remove all the dirt from the spiders, Legolas, or these gashes and gouges will not heal up well," Aragorn instructed. He returned to his pack to see how much of the sing ing salve remained and looked up when the elf gasped as he resurfaced from his dive under the tannin saturated liquid.

Legolas stood up, howled at the pressure on the ankle, over balanced and splashed back under. He was soon joined in the pool as the wizard and the mortal both stripped off and plunged in as well. Neither seemed very pleased with the brash bite of the brown water and sluiced themselves off as quickly as they could. Legolas was already out and shivering on the bank when they hauled themselves to shore.

As he had predicted, each of his companions had extra clothing among their belongings and quickly redressed themselves. Legolas was not so lucky and had to put back on the tattered and much mended leggings, now begrimed with the stench of the spiders' remains. He watched as Aragorn approached with the small jar and recognized the scent with a suddenness that almost made him exclaim.

"What is that concoction, Aragorn? How did you get it, for I have been treated with it before," he asked, curious.

"My father makes it, he is a healer."

"Yet that explains nothing, unless you can tell me that elves now train Men to heal other elves!"

"It works as well on Men, though it takes longer as does any remedy for my kind. And as for being trained in healing, I have found the elves at home more than happy to share such knowledge with me. I cannot speak for other humans or other Realms." As he talked he gently applied the cooling lotion and was gratified by the ease this gave his friend, and he could almost swear the growth of the new skin was visible.

But Aragorn sighed and looked over at Gandalf, for he felt he could no longer withhold the truth from Legolas. The wizard nodded his approval; they would have to get to the bottom of it anw waw was as good a time as any. He was especially interested to find out how the Wood Elf had met Erestor.

"Legolas, you asked before about this, and uld uld not answer because I did not want you to turn against me. It is because I am from Imladris, and the Brown wizard told us elves from there have harmed you," Aragorn said bluntly.

Legolas stared, incredulous, and found he could not generate any anger, only surprise and a peculiar emptiness. the the Imladrians had caused he did not want to start thinking about again, and hoped that if he concentrated on the irregularity of a human living in an elven realm he could just keep it from seeping back into his mind. It was impossible, however, for Imladris made him think of Elrond and that caused him to think of his father. He moaned despairingly and Gandalf came over immediately to his side.

"Legolas, you mentioned Erestor when you were just back from the fighting. Tell me what part he has played in all these troubles, for I will see him brought before Elrond to answer for it!" he said.

"He is just a healer and a spy." Legolas shrugged listlessly; he could not really remember what Erestor had to do with it and did not want to. "He both helped and hurt. I cannot understand him at all! I know not what else he is involved in, or what Elrond actually intended him to do. They were attempting to turn me against my own; you know all about their thoughts on the Ring. Why they felt I would help them break into Thranduil's vaults I know not; except that they must think very lowly of me, indeed." These words were spoken with pained exasperation and then the elf fell silent.

But Aragorn and Gandalf looked at each other with confusion.

"Legolas, forgive me, I do not mean to contradict you. But Erestor of Imladris is not a healer," said Aragorn. "If they were spies, as you say, I suspect they lied about themselves, probably to impress you with their importance in hopes to sway you more easily. Describe this false-named elf, for I have lived in the Last Homely House nearly all my life and will likely recognize him."

Tbc.