Further Tales Of Elbereth's Bounty

Title: Further Tales Of Elbereth’s Bounty – Rohrith’s Tale, Part 1
Author: Gloromeien
Email: swishbucklers@hotmail.com
Pairing: multiple OMC/OMC, Tathren/Echoriath, references to Legolas/Elrohir, Glorfindel/Elladan
Summary: This is a companion piece to Of Elbereth’s Bounty, which takes place between the action of the final chapter (16) and the epilogue, set centuries in the future. Some of the characters from OEB deserved to have their own stories wrapped up outside of the actual narrative of that tale. This particular tale, along with Ciryon’s Tale, concern the majority rites of two of Tathren’s triplet brothers.
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimers: Characters belong to that wily old wizard himself, Tolkien the Wise, the granddad of all 20th century fantasy lit. I serve at the pleasure of his estate and aim not for profit.
Author’s Note: While I think parts of this story can be understood on their own, I think it better to read the whole cycle, or at least Of Elbereth’s Bounty, to completely understand the world I’ve created and the character histories. The series is as follows: Part One is ‘In Earendil’s Light’, Part Two is ‘Under the Elen’, and the vastly larger Part Three is ‘Of Elbereth’s Bounty’.
Feedback: Would be delightful.
Dedication: To Eresse, as always.

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Further Tales Of Elbereth’s Bounty

Rohrith’s Tale – Part 1


Spring, Year 157, Fourth Age

With a pace even the fleetest of hares would envy, the elfling bounded through the glade, skipping over arching tree roots, leaping over fallen logs, and swinging himself from low-hanging boughs. As he gamely hopped across a giggling brook atop a trail of surfaced stones, he counted out each in Quenya – he had just that morning learnt to count in the more formal elven tongue – hoping to impress the pair of twin elves that followed him in leisurely stride.

“Rohrith!” Elrohir called out, bemusement implicit in his tone. “Do not stray too far, ioneth, else the fog may swallow you up.”

With an obedient nod, the elfling shot through the slick blades of the long grass towards a nearby rock, almost three times his considerably diminutive size. He grappled up the moist, mossy edge, his fingers splattering the tiny pools of dew collected on the ridges, then hoisted himself, with a trill of triumph, atop the damp plateau. He carefully lolled his muddy boots over the ledge and gathered his cloak around him, the crisp air of new spring chilling the sheen of sweat his exertions had wrought.

With a grin as wide as a halved melon, he waited for his father and his uncle to catch up, knowing that when they did he would be plucked from atop the rock by his Ada-Dan, tossed jovially between them awhile, until his Ada-Hir would swing him back onto his shoulders, to keep him from running off again. Rohrith was yet uncertain if they had figured out that he sprinted so far ahead just to be so jostled about and to cling so tightly to his Ada-Hir, but as they were two of the wisest and wiliest elves he knew, he did not doubt they had extended knowledge of his ruses. As his grandsire was so fond of saying, his twin sons had been, in their day, far more daunting to rear than even he and his two brothers combined.

Once he had been quite skillfully thrown about and was perched snugly against his father’s back, he could not help but be bit again by his own teething sense of curiosity. His esteemed Ada-Hir was teaching a lesson to one of the older classes at Lord Erestor’s school today and had invited him to accompany him, all on his own! He was unsure why Ada-Hir thought he could learn the same things as the elder elflings, as Rohrith and his brothers had just started their own private tutorials the year before in anticipation of their first official semester next fall, but he was only too curious about such an advanced experience and all too eager to befriend some of the older children. He had seen so many interesting elves when Ada-Las brought him to the training fields, how he longed to know them all!

Rohrith only realized he had been speaking aloud, when Ada-Dan commented that he was sure even the older elflings would be glad to know such a lively elf as he. Ada-Hir seconded that as soon as they heard his delightful chatter, they would be enthralled, but also cautioned that if Rohrith ever felt uncomfortable, that he was to simply excuse himself politely and return to his father’s side. Rohrith could not truly understand why he should feel uncomfortable in the presence of other elflings, they were surely just as eager to make friends as he? His father and uncle took on that funny look of theirs, the secret one that meant they were speaking through their twinly bond. Rohrith understood this, for he and his brothers could do the same thing, but he could not make out what these two twins were saying. Undaunted, he launched a volley of questions at them, as he was most intent on learning all he could about the class of his older peers before meeting them in person. One should always prepare oneself for an atypical situation, that is what Ada-Las taught them about battle and this, he had found, could also be readily applied to inter-elven communication. As usual, his guardians answered explicitly and thoughtfully, which was one of the things he admired most about them and sought to emulate in his own right.

Before he had even half completed his rather interminable list of questions, they had arrived at the school. Ada-Hir eased him down from his perch, laying an arm over his shoulders in silent indication that he should stay close, for the time being. The class was having its early recreation period. Small groups of friends were lazing about the open courtyard, under the ring of rowan trees, frolicking and jesting as only familiars do. Though brimming with the desire to dash off to introduce himself, he took Ada-Hir’s stoic advice and meticulously observed them; after, of course, bidding an affectionate farewell to his Ada-Dan, who had his own class of junior swordsmen waiting. Rohrith wished he could attend that session, as well, but the chance to be in on a philosophy and debate seminar was a much rarer pleasure.

The adolescent elflings about were not so different from his own peers. He could tell right away that they were sectioned off by common interest: the archers in one corner, always with their quivers slung over their backs, the future guardsmen heckling them in another; some tradesmen gathered around the gurgling fountain, while the hardcore intellects were crouched beneath the furthest, canopy-like tree, already vetting out the minor points of that day’s prospective lesson. Each of these companies had its lures, as he was friend to all; indeed, he fidgeted quite hopelessly in place, raring to break into their circles and command their singular attention.

It was then that he remarked a lone elf, sequestered in a sunless nook by the far gate, fiddling with a fallen leaf while keeping his eyes studiously down. None of the others even spared the quiet elf a passing glance, as if that area of the courtyard was forbidden to them. As some frivolous disagreement broke between two of the groups, an argument flared up, but even as his classmates fought around him, the sullen elf did not even look up and they in turn paid him no heed. Confronted, for the first time, by such unconscionable behavior, Rohrith took time to examine the elf further, theorizing that there might be something different about him, something strange to these others.

He found nothing particularly out of the ordinary. The elf was of Sindar descent, for certes, perhaps not as lithe as some of his brethren, but he made up for his almost mannish frame with his spectral coloring. His hair was the white-gold of starshine, his skin immaculate; even in his shadowy enclave, he shone like a bleached winter sun. He reminded Rohrith of his Sinda grandmother, the ethereal Laurelith, who so doted upon her triplets that she was known, even among the brothers, to gluttonously spoil them. When at last the inquisitive elfling got but the briefest glance of his eyes, he found them the misty blue of ocean brume, mysterious and unyielding. The elf was otherworldly, to be sure, but bedazzlingly so; Rohrith immediately wanted to unravel all his apparently plentiful secrets.

With this in mind, he tugged on his Ada-Hir’s breeches, until proper notice was taken of him.

“Ada, who is that elf, there?” Rohrith asked with typically adamancy, his onyx eyes still fixed on the lonely one. “Why is he alone? Why do the others keep from him? They do not even seem to see him at all!”

Elrohir sighed, long and heavy, wondering how to impart such complexities to his yet innocent, wholly accepting child.

“That is Dioren,” Elrohir gently explained to him, choosing his words with utmost care. He was uncertain how much to reveal of Dioren’s unique and peculiar condition, how much one of Rohrith’s yet tender years might comprehend of such things. “He is… a very special young elf.”

“Does he not like to play?” Rohrith questioned more intently, his quicksilver mind darting over each and every possibility known to one of his age.

“He likes playing very well,” Elrohir replied. “But he is… he has been sick for some time. Your grandsire is working with him, trying to heal him, but it will take many years yet. The others do not understand this. His sickness sometimes makes him seem absent, or even spelled, and this scares them. But I have spent some time with him in close counsel, and he is very sweet. So sweet, in fact, that he does not press them to allow his company, but stays away.”

“Silly elves!” Rohrith spat, disgusted by such behavior, especially from those said to be older and smarter than he. “Do they not know that he needs friends even more than most?”

Before Elrohir could elaborate on the nature of the condition, his compassionate son was off, having found yet another weary soul to champion. Truly, his Rohrith was a force all his own. With a slim but proud smile, Elrohir watched his brash little gallant storm across the courtyard, stand in the sun above poor, astounded Dioren, and offer his tiny hand in greeting. Before long, Rohrith had settled himself in close quarters with the still-gaping adolescent, babbling on about all and sundry, until he had hit upon what topics would readily entertain him.

If Elrohir had known, at the time, what would come of their startling friendship, he may have held his son back a few moments longer.

**********************************************

Spring, Year 260, Fourth Age

“It has begun, Ada,” Elrohir pronounced ominously, as he paced about the high terrace of the Lord’s private residence, tossing pained glances at the tragic scene below.

The peredhil foundling Dioren had, in one of his all-too-frequent fugues, rode his horse off a cliff.

The elf had been sentient enough to throw himself from his steed moments before he shot over the sheer face; his horse, spooked by his rider’s strange behavior, had not been so fortunate. Dioren, as usual, did not recall a second of the incident in question, nor what had incited him to so frighten his steed, yet he was by now lucid enough to suffer the devastating consequences, as he did presently and had so many times before. That he had adored his stallion, had raised him from birth, only amplified his self-revulsion, though few elves would hold from berating themselves with a torrent of scathing abuses for even the accidental slaying of a steed in battle. Dioren was, by now, entirely despondent with grief. He cowered, dolorous, in the thick branches of his favorite elm, fortuitously interred in the gardens of the Lord’s estate, so that Elrond could observe him even as he abjectly refused to descend from its boughs or to receive even the barest touch of comfort.

Dioren would wait, as ever, for the only one who could truly console him.

Though nearly grown to full maturity, there was something tirelessly endearing about Dioren, such that the keenest minds in Telperion were currently gathered on his terrace to puzzle out a solution to his woes. Elrond monitored the pinched faces and furrowed brows around him for precious insight into their perspectives, though these he would learn soon enough. While Elrohir, clearly rattled by this worst of calamities thus far, tread a ditch into his floor tiles with his furious pacing, Elladan was entirely opposite in demeanor (both of the twins taking on, oddly, the opposite of their usual reactions). In this, he was support personified, to any and every elder who might require it, but most effectively to Glorfindel, who glowered restlessly at his side. They waited upon Legolas, who had gone to fetch Luinaelin, and Erestor, who could not quite delay another dearly babe’s birthing to attend even a gathering of such import.

There had been many such informal councils since Dioren’s advent in their fair vale; Elrond estimated there would be many more, until his peredhil majority finally settled him in his own skin.

Or so they collectively hoped.

Dioren was, by the Lord’s account, the most extraordinary elf he’d ever sought to heal. Born to a Dorian mother and human father, Dioren barely outlived his sire by a decade. He was slain in the prime of adolescence just two years short of his majority, sent to Mandos before his elven fea had fully taken form, before any thought of choice could be made. As he was but an elfling at the time of his death, he could only be reborn to his mother, but as he was also peredhil, his father’s spirit could not be summoned back by the Valar to sire him anew. He had lingered, half-grown, in the Halls of Awaiting for over a millennia, until the Shadow’s fall and the first age of peace had precipitated his mother to seek out another human lover. She smartly chose a descendant of Dioren’s father’s line, thus allowing her son to be reborn. Resident of Ithilien under Luinaelin’s rule, the spooky child was beset by spells, fits, and long periods of catatonia. Such a harrowing trial was his early rearing that his mother subsequently faded, from the strain, from the death of her second lover, and from the knowing that she had plagued her child with the haunting of his own, infantile spirit. Luinaelin and his goodly wife took pity on the poor, abandoned elfling, adopting him as one of their own. Once arrived in Telperion, they presented the matter to Elrond, who had devoted himself to the child’s safe-keeping, to remedying these rarest of ailments.

The trouble was such as even the master healer had never encountered before. Dioren’s new hora did not exactly accommodate his earlier fea, for the seed that made him was not entirely the same as his previous incarnation. The Valar had fashioned him new characteristics to fill in the older, unformed soul, which struggled within him to meld. Throughout his childhood and even after both his elven majorities, Dioren suffered prolonged states of fugue, glaring personality shifts, and uncharacteristically violent actions, of which he later remembered naught. He was uncertain of even the most simple preferences; chores that kept him cheerfully occupied one day were maligned the next, foods he devoured he later spat out unapologetically - twas little wonder he was shunned in his early years. Only upon his peredhil majority of 150 years, Elrond and Erestor had theorized, would he truly be whole, truly be one within himself.

This was, however, only a hypothesis, whose accomplishment could possibly break the young elf long before unity in spirit would be his.

Dioren’s salvation had come one crisp spring day, in the courtyard of Erestor’s school, when the Lord’s brash young grandson had forced the shy, adolescent peredhil into his acquaintance, a maneuver only his tenacious Rohrith could so subtly and so righteously accomplish. Despite the forty-year separation in their ages, they had been inseparable since. Rohrith’s strength of character, even but a season past infancy, had impressed Dioren, encouraged and molded him into the gracious, yet highly social elf he was now. Rohrith’s example had brought others into the peredhil’s previously insular circle; though he still tormented himself over his more calamitous spells, he learned to take his glacial fugues in stride and so did his growing number of friends. Rohrith had likewise opened even Elrond’s eyes to Dioren’s potential. He had fought his grandfather for months to allow Dioren to take up the sword, charging that the discipline would focus him (which it had). He was similarly argumentative over how they sheltered Dioren from his own independence, insisting that he could never discover his true self if he was not given a chance at autonomy. It was thus that Dioren was granted a ground-level talan of his own, in which not one incident had come to pass.

Rohrith’s greatest influence, however, was in the cultivation of his friend’s mind. His fugues had caused Dioren’s mother to neglect his early education, even those among Erestor’s staff found his tutelage rife with problems and obstacles. Rohrith, however, burned through all this with his usual fiery determination, challenging his own following of ponderous philosophers, devout swordbrothers, and broody diplomats to constantly engage Dioren when he was in their company. These caused periods of intense reflection that began to keep his fugues at bay, as Dioren was of a wonderfully philosophic, clever, and musing mind. He was also the sweetest, most kindly elf one could imagine; he had long conquered the memory of his dour, isolated elflinghood to emerge as an adult even more amiable – when in high mirth – than even Brithor. Every and all were welcome in his company. He had even frequented his share of maids. Though none had moved him past a fleeting indulgence, he was so courtly to them none felt hard against him and every one still held him as a friend.

After a hundred years of close confidence, he was more than ought Rohrith’s second, and would one day prove the most valued of advisors to him. Rohrith’s relentless friendship had given Dioren a priceless foundation on which to form his own striking character; he was refined, not shaped, by the preternatural drive of this unshakably loyal one. As Dioren now sailed towards the choppy waters of his imminent peredhil majority and the two tributary rivers of his persona poured tempestuously into one, he would need the buoyancy and spirit of Rohrith’s devotion to keep him afloat.

But at what cost to his brave, but tender-hearted grandson?

Though long resolved past such dramatics now, they had almost lost even this valiant one in the weeks following his first majority. Simply put, Rohrith loved his friend more than platonically, wholly and entirely, in every possible way one could. Their extended family was appraised of this one secret, the only confidence he had ever kept from his beloved one, but Dioren himself patently ignored even the most vivid evidence of such an emotion. The flame of hope that Dioren could somehow return his affection had flared quite injuriously in the face of his unspoken, implied rejection, thus Rohrith had become sick with grief. Dioren, while gravely concerned for his friend, had floated about as if completely oblivious to his weakening; there to succor him, to cheer him, but not to satisfy him. None of the elders could decently reason out why an elf so shrewd as Dioren, minutely attuned to the cares of his constant companion, could be so obtuse.

Even long past Rohrith’s mysterious recovery – by some rallying of courage none could verily justify – solutions were proposed in quiet, family circles, all things from his traditionalist Sinda origins to his stupefying preference for maids. Yet none who longly observed the friends together could rightly cling to such a secondary theory, as Dioren’s fond gestures towards Rohrith spoke a language all too familiar to longtime ellon couples.

Which raised the matter of his impending melding of souls. Dioren’s fits and spells served a purpose, as most afflictions did. Though his conscious mind had repressed the manner of his death, the terrorized little elfling that had loomed, parentless, at Mandos for over a millennia knew all too well what demonic foe had slain him. He was haunted by echoes, by ephemeral images of his killing, as well as by the impulses and urges of the tenderling he had once been. As even during his spells Dioren dissociated himself from the present time, Elrond believed that his occasional bursts of violence when so maddened came from the slow reliving of these imperiled moments from his previous existence, so that only once he had entirely remembered his passing could his two spirits flame as one. The frequency with which these fits were reoccurring suggested that such a possession was imminent. The Lord only hoped Dioren was strong enough to survive such intense and overwhelming terrors.

Luckily, his conclusions were not entirely unprecedented. Glorfindel had, of late, taken Dioren under his wing, as much to exorcise his own memories of rebirth as to aid the young elf. Though Glorfindel had always been a blazing spirit of undaunted character, he well understood the strangeness of inhabiting a foreign body that is nevertheless your own, the feeling of dispossession inherent to the advent of a reborn elf’s majority. He had been guiding Dioren in various meditation techniques, in order to summon his elfling spirit in a more controlled environment, but these sessions had not resulted in much success. Dioren felt more peaceful when in time with his surroundings, but was ravaged in the calling up of his stricken former self – an elfling’s horror was wild and untamable as a windstorm, it could not help but savage him something ferocious.

Yet this latest incident only underlined the need for expediency in their endeavors, as Dioren’s past was swiftly afflicting his present circumstance, impregnating his current state of mind with bleak visions of direst cruelty.

It nearly broke his own spirit, to think of what Dioren must suffer through to become whole.

Elrohir now hung over the edge of the rail, his face drawn and conflicted. All on the terrace could hear Rohrith’s eloquent cooing in the tree below, Dioren embedded in his arms. None could mistake the fact that every word, every phrase was stealthily imbued with his love. Dioren would take what platonic succor he required from the purity of this heartfelt note, but the elders on the balcony above marked only the true tenor of his sing-song assurances, overwhelmed as it was by the ever-constant refrain of friendship, of loyalty and of devotion.

Witnessing this touching scene, of a tragedy all its own, Elrond was suddenly struck by the reason for Rohrith’s recovery. His grandson knew, better than any, the perils Dioren faced in coming to his majority; had recognized, as only one of his gifted foresight could, that the peredhil would not survive without him. He had, with a strength of will as titanic and selfless as that of his uncle Elladan, chosen to stave off death itself in order to serve his most beloved. If, once Dioren was whole, he still clung to his maidenly pursuits, then Rohrith could not say he had not given his all for love. He would most certainly fade; quickly at that. Until such a time, he would rein himself in, he would repress his own desires, and he would rage against his dying light, all for the life of one who cherished him in every way, save the one of most import.

Elrond could almost weep, he admired him so.

“Have you never remarked upon, ioneth,” the Lord commented to Elrohir. “Rohrith’s incredible resemblance to Elladan, in character?”

When the elf-knight remained impassive, Glorfindel replied in his stead: “Often have I noted this. Fearless, impetuous, masterfully stubborn, and altogether relentless in the face of adversity… he is your son in spirit, melethron.” Elladan himself just chuckled at this characterization, kissing his husband on the cheek.

“But he is mine, by fate,” Elrohir sighed, turning to face them. “Though he seems resolved to emulate your tortuous path to love, gwanur. I pray he weathers it so well.”

“I pray his heart is answered soonest,” Elladan frowned in turn. “I would not wish my earlier suffering on any, let alone one so gentle as he in loving.”

At this reminder of his brother’s torment, Elrohir’s face grew ashen. Elrond felt he would give anything in his expansive power to see his dear son heartened, to see his grandson beloved.

In matters of love, alas, they were all powerless to the fates.

***************************************

Two Months Later

The day was shady and cool for early summer, the uniform cast of cloud above meshing the dense foliage of the treeline into a blurred canopy of green and gray. The still, portentous air hung over him like a translucent film, thick with the scent of verdure, earth, and bark. The forest was dank, unsettled, and he along with it, as if its hollows hid a predatory presence, some phantom shadow lurking beyond. Rohrith unconsciously gripped the hilt of his sword, but trudged along undaunted through the murk, eager for the company that awaited him.

He was distracted, he well knew, perchance too distracted for a proper swordfight. His night had been restless; so swollen with sultry dreams that he had been jostled awake, over and again, by the last, sizzling bolts of pleasure before his final, rapturous spurt – one would hardly think him an elf of a hundred-fifteen years. Yet summer climes unfailingly brought out the longing in him, such were the sodden trials of prolonged abstinence. He would not sleep for the entire broiling month of midsummer with his body so provoked, but the satiating alternative was too revolting to even contemplate. He had not broken his vow to never touch another he did not love since his eighty-third year, he would not be now conquered by his lusts. He would bear through, as ever; every ache and throb justifying his worthiness for Elbereth’s eventual reward.

He prayed nightly the Lady would bless him soonest, while some sanity was left him.

His preoccupied, yet roused mood was not helped in the least by his sudden coming upon the very epicenter of his desire’s sway, though a rendez-vous with said elf was his intended destination. As he approached the training fields, he found Dioren practicing his fighting form, through a series of poses that flexed every sinuous muscle of his limber frame and stretched every meat-thick limb most alluringly, his sleek body veritably thrumming with the feral power of full maturation. Echoriath had so often sung the praises of the oncoming of peredhil majority when Tathren grew bashful over his own gossamer hirsuteness, that it was almost a joke among family, but witnessing the phenomenon himself, Rohrith’s torment became nearly excruciating in his already over-excited state.

Dioren’s deadly beauty only further maddened him. Hair like the golden gleam of sun on the filaments of a spider’s web, face a striking architecture of plains, angles, and curves, heavy-lidded eyes of exotic shape but of ice blue clarity (except when in the haze of a fugue), body of a colossus though elegant as a swan; only the knowledge of his gentle demeanor and perilously fragile heart had kept Rohrith from seducing him outright. Nay, that last was disingenuous; the potential ruin of their sterling friendship ever sobered him, not to mention the troubles that plagued this extraordinary elf he adored.

Valar, but he was crudely bent, this day! One would think him a wanton, so insulting was his baseness to such a loyal, one dear as a brother to him. Perhaps he should beg off their proposed rally and seek the giddy company of his twins. A sword would be but a paltry defense against the assault of Dioren’s ethereal might in combat, where he was often at his loveliest. Rohrith flushed with shame at the very thought of his friend thus, he must focus on the continued repression of these false yearnings. There were times when he believed he should allow himself to feel this and all tenors of his affection, loose the shackles that kept his love caged and let unrestrained emotion flee its century-long imprisonment within him, but he instinctively knew such a titanic revelation would lose Dioren to him forever, if not outright endanger him.

Barely a six-month from his full majority, Dioren’s fugues had stretched out interminably. He now spent entire days in a soft-witted slump, woke thrashing through his sheets like a lion cub. Yet his days of sharpness were incisively so; he was keener, more cunning, and more acute in his observations than ever before, so long as these were impersonal. When one touched on a personal matter, he rattled with startling ease, even barking at Rohrith’s careful prodding where once he would emphatically confide (for his grandsire had told him in which direction to guide his emergent memory). Since the loss of his horse, there had been no further incidents involving others. Instead, Dioren’s wrath was self-inflicted, though in the aftermath he was both deeply ashamed of such incredulous behavior and helpless to say what prompted him to slash at his own skin.

Rohrith would not himself acknowledge the soul-aches this inspired within him; better to focus on his lechery and avoid the agony of tenderness altogether.

This week had been blessedly torture-free, almost entirely joyful for his friend. The High Council was hosting its decennial visit from the Elders of Vinyamar. Just days before, there had been an open forum to various local interests groups, to incite alliances in such common regards between the towns. Rohrith had represented the youth contingent, giving an ecstatically received oration before a theatre audience consisting of most of the vale; Dioren had naturally acted as his secretary. The flurry of preparation before had centered Dioren, just as his recent bodily development had incited him to train more regularly at swords. He was anxious to exercise the potential he felt coursing within him and Rohrith was the only one in their age class who could match him.

Both patently ignored the fact that Rohrith was also the only elf who would meet him in such a treacherous context, rumors being what they would ever be.

With a snort of mocking impatience, Rohrith announced himself, eyebrow perched in wry commentary on Dioren’s display. The peredhil was humble enough to blush at his own vanity, though beneath there was a faint glow of pride. Dioren was not entirely unaware of his own comeliness – he lured maids to his bed easily enough with his charms – if ought, he clung to such qualities, as he felt there was not much else to commend him, what with the spells, fits, everlasting fugues, and peculiar past. Indeed, he had never quite reconciled himself to the honor of Rohrith’s elemental and instantaneous befriending, but he knew it as a gift from the Valar themselves and would never in any mind forsake him for such benevolence. They both knew terribly well he would not live long, if Rohrith were to quit him entirely.

This painful truth kept Dioren strong and constant, but also kept Rohrith’s heart dimmed to friendly affection.

“You look spry,” Rohrith taunted him, blatantly admiring his physique as he knew this would only chasten Dioren further. “Quite ruddy, indeed. Were there revels, night last?”

“There may have been revels,” Dioren demurred, though obviously raring to tell of his exploits. Rohrith welcomed the recounting of even the most salacious tales, though they pricked him viciously, for he knew how their revelation helped bolster his friend’s feeble confidence. “Bregorn and Ianthir dragged me to the ale hall, with some of the Vinyamarian secretaries. I had no wares to sell in this troubled time, as you well know, but could I help it if I was approached?”

“Was she fair?” Rohrith goaded him, his tone studiously mirthful.

“Fair enough,” Dioren confessed, reddening even deeper. “She was plump bottomed and terribly soft. The softness, I think, is what lures me… She was visiting from Vinyamar herself, the daughter of a councilor. She knew naught of my repute.”

“Perhaps that was what lured you,” Rohrith remarked, though his point was blunted some.

“Perhaps,” Dioren admitted, darkening.

Rohrith, chiding himself for his idiocy, urged him on: “And did you for a time find some much deserved merriment? Some relief?”

“She was pleasant enough, though not to linger with,” Dioren conceded, his face yet preoccupied by some hint of sadness, as ever it was when he spoke of coupling. “The release was all I sought. I will not meet her again.”

“You might do well to enjoy yourself, for a time,” Rohrith suggested, clapping a hand on his shoulder. “Your mind is clear, these days. Why not take an extra share of pleasure, before the trials to come?” They always spoke forthright of Dioren’s state, as they felt naught could be faced in dishonesty.

“If you seek not such fleshly pleasures,” Dioren countered. “Then why should I?”

“I am not afflicted,” Rohrith murmured, so as not to injure him with pique. “I see plainly how such dalliances strengthen you. You are always fit and rosy, afterwards, your mind at blessed ease. For myself, I took my share upon my majority, and several times thereafter. I am content.”

Dioren’s eyes bore into him, then, as if rapt on his very soul.

“Nay, you are ill-content, gwador-nin,” he threw back, though with implicit caring. “I may be troubled, but I too see plain, all too blatantly how your hot gaze follows the river-rowers as they churn, or the builders as they knock about the trees. The summertime has ever boiled your blood, yet you insist on abstinence. Why? And do not say I deserve pleasure because *I* am afflicted – do you think I make no mark of how my fits and fugues afflict *you*, meldiren?”

“I care not for trysting,” Rohrith dodged. “I desires only… true affection.”

“True affection is not found glowering about one’s talan,” Dioren countered, though did not wish to press him too roughly, as he would only chafe further. “Perhaps you should dally with a maid or two, if you find the love of males wanting…”

“Ha! You would only be too glad of it,” Rohrith snarked, seizing upon the chance to lighten their conversation. “We could sniff about the ale halls together, like a pair of randy wargs in mating season.” Both laughed quite heartily at this image, though by now eager to take up arms. “But I should ask the same offense of you, gwador! Why do *you* not take up with some strapping male and feast on your virility awhile?”

“After your moping and maudlin example?” Dioren shot back, as his opponent doffed his cloak. “I have my fill of agony!”

“Tis no agony to be thusly filled,” Rohrith winked saucily, at which his friend gasped with appropriately effete shock. “Indeed, one becomes quite debauched by such ecstasies, if the broadsword is suitably deft.”

“Yours best learn some craft, if you are to best me this day,” Dioren repliqued, positioning himself for their rally. “I feel the spirit within.”

“I assure you of my prowess in either form of swordplay,” Rohrith flicked his tongue at him, which caused Dioren to fall into a rather unmenacing fit of giggles. “Now cease your snickering and let us play!”

“Indeed,” Dioren sneered, with overabundant – though still mocking - salaciousness. “Then I beg you, mellon-nin… prove my arrogance forthwith, best me in close combat, and err not in driving your *point home*!”

Rohrith felt, just then, that he may very well have to do his worst, even to such a friend.

Either that, or he would kiss him senseless.

***

A rush of wind wilded through the training fields, as the duellists commenced the encircling movement that always instigated their fights. The woods about were stark, silent, as if stilled by the rumble of distant thunder. Their taunts snarled and their stances broken, their feral stares mated ferociously, ever anticipating the first strike of their singing swords. Their bodies feigned a casual stroll when with every step, with every clench of hand they anticipated that singeing connection, with even the merest flick of wrist their battle would begin.

Dioren met his opponent with eyes that could cut glass, pristine and elusive. His focus refined to a dagger’s scoring tip, he patiently awaited, without need of the usual blustery sniffs and scoffs, Rohrith’s overture. Though his friend sneered rather convincingly, it was against the brash elf’s nature to let himself be affronted, to immediately take on a defensive tact. Ever did Rohrith stride forth, lead on, be the first to raise the rafters and the last to gloriously ‘scape away. He was presently holding fast against Dioren’s usual maneuver, but despite its deployment in every single duel they had fought in the last hundred years, he would not be restrained. Before long, his shoulders would bristle defiantly, his head would rear; he’d snort to stable himself. He’d tempt Dioren into lashing out with his time-worn abuses - so painless as to be laughable – and would only himself suffer aggravation.

The very live element of Rohrith’s essence was to charge, to delve, prod, and pierce, to *penetrate* one’s defenses and know them from within. Twas thus from the first between them; the adamant elfling who had ruthlessly stood before the sun itself, demanding his hand in friendship and plopping himself summarily down beside him, to prove his own oath true. Rohrith had not been satisfied with mere friendship, however. If he inspired devotion, it was because he gave all in return, filling your brain with impossible notions about the beauty of your character and urging your body towards unthinkable feats that ultimately proved your courage. His challenges bettered you. His example rallied you into form. He knew your heart so implicitly that he dared to believe of you what you could not yet conscience. If not for his influence, Dioren would still be lost in the mire of shame at his condition, occupied in naught but mucky self-flaggelation, in the continually somber state Rohrith had found him in a century ago. Instead, he had achieved lethal excellence in sword training, was considered one of the most intuitive minds in philosophic debate, and, after the trials of his majority, would be employed as an advisor to the most eloquent starling in the vale’s diplomatic roost.

To be possessed by his brother-friend’s regard was a thing of hallowed purity, as vital to one’s wellness as the air itself.

The fact of this would not, however, keep Dioren from demolishing the darkling elf’s barely-controlled cool with aloofness, from eviscerating his form as they battled. Rohrith had been the one, after all, who whet his taste for triumph. To best one of such merciless skill was the most delicious victory his too oft humbled spirit had ever known.

Their swordplay was entirely enthralling, his preference of their many shared activities. On the fields, they were equal, in stature, in talent. Opposed, they were tested as with no other fighter. Together, none could dream of besting them. Though often wrung to the very limits of himself, Dioren gladly bore through *this* form of pain, as their abolishing exertion was always accompanied by an unparalleled oneness. Even when dueling, they ducked and swung in a complimentary cadence; the only break in rhythm came with a hit. Yet unfailingly, they would fall back into the constant sway of gush and swell, their motions fluid, complicit. Even in physical contest, Rohrith could not ebb the mad rush of his heart; even in conquest, your frustrations were smote by the overtaking flow of his admiration for you - who fought so honorably - that you could be naught but gracious in defeat.

Dioren was nevertheless tickled with pleasure, when Rohrith’s stoic manner began to chafe. To further bait him, he slid the steel shafts of their swords together, teasing as a caress. The telltale snort was grunt out with the fire of a fuming dragon, he flexed the scales of his spine. His black, impenetrable eyes sparked with ire, his jowls pooled with froth he could not yet swallow down. With a toothy smirk, Dioren stroked his sword anew, nearly tapping at the white knuckles so tightly fisted around the hilt.

A lightening flash streaked across those ominous eyes; Rohrith lunged at him.

Sparks flew as their swords clashed furiously, the might of wills momentarily overcoming the finery of form. A growling jab at his side caused Dioren to wrench back, opening the field wide for their game. Rohrith was particularly vicious this morn, stabbing repeatedly in an overtly gutting move, which challenged Dioren to further the complexities of his own fighting technique. He mined every lesson for a parry, a thrust, even a swipe that might surprise his opponent. His rapid-fire response only plummeted them towards a sequence of breathtaking speed and force. Neither, however, once so engaged would soon relent the fearsome rage of their duelling. They hacked and slashed their way blind off the training fields, into the swampy mist and the marshy ground of the woods.

Even as Dioren vaulted over a ridge to steal a second’s respite from their thrashing, the dank atmosphere unsettled him. Icy pins pricked into his spine, the ghostly whisper of the elfling’s glacial presence descending upon him like gauzy brume. He cursed, whined, but was distracted by an assault from Rohrith’s ever-cunning blade, such that he drifted even further out of his skin and left his scything body to instinct alone. This specter of his past smoked into him, snatching him away from that elemental oneness with his sparring partner and infusing his too-vulnerable mind with an altogether more graphic scene of slaughter.

His own, to be revisited anew.

***

His every muscle, stretch, and sinew thrumming with potency, Rohrith leapt over the muddy slope with breathtaking agility, then flew back into the fray.

Dioren’s play was positively inspired, with such aggressive force and dexterity that Rohrith’s body veritably surged with glutting energy as he twisted, wrenched, and struck brutally back, ever hungry for more. They were beyond keen, in his thrill-gorged esteem; they were titans roaring through the heavens, their battle epic, insurgent, and all-encompassing. No act of love between them could be so climactic as this moment, roused as they were to the essential expulsion of all within them. In close combat he knew Dioren more sacredly than any yielding flesh, their visceral compact as earnest as any baring of the body, their vulnerability as explicit. In this coupling of prowess, partnered in battle or parrying on the green, they swore to take the other’s life in hand, survival dependent on skill alone.

Here, in the crucible of war and will, they had become one.

He wished the fight would never end.

***

The woods about were strange, weirded with cloying murk and writhing with shadow. He sensed the danger, crawling like beetles over his skin, but it had yet to strike.

They whipped along the homeward path as swiftly as sparrows in a gale, not daring to look back lest fear lead the charge against them. Already he could feel his sword slice through the sickly air, through tenuous leathers straps, through seething hide, though he had never killed before. He would kill now, kill any manner of revolting creature, to see his friend safe. As they streaked through the gloaming mirkwood, his heart pounded so that he felt as if already fighting, hacking and jabbing in desperation, to stave off some incipient foe. An errant branch thwacked hard on his wrist when he grabbed for his friend’s hand; even the trees, shroud in gloom, were against them.

Before he could rightly look about, an arrow grazed his ear. They were instantaneously overtaken by a legion of hissing, teeming orcs, their gnarled faces and their beady eyes everywhere at once. Though nearly disemboweled with terror, he unleashed the sterling strike of his sword, staking three through the innards before he could rightly swing. The clank and clatter of his dearly friend battling beside summoned up his sense. He launched himself at the sniveling hordes with one blazing thought effulgent, to keep vigil over the imperiled flame of his surest of fellows.

He fought with voracious bite, but with little flair. He bathed in the hot spurt of blood as if in a bubbling spring, with their every witless death was his life assured. He maimed, mauled, and feverishly mutilated with a heart befouled by this first battlefield horror, never again wanting to steal the breath from another being even as he speared his sword true. Only his friend’s relentless grunts kept his wits about him, as long as he drew breath, he would hold strong against the monstrous tide.

Silence struck cold, deadly swift.

He knew it in his bones, though his spirit yet fingered the bristles of their severed connection, pleading for some thread, some frayed string that still linked them, but no longer. A broad and bulky figure towered above him, poised to cleave him in twain. He smelt the sweet elven blood on the fiend’s sword, like the most fragrant ambrosia, and knew he could not thusly fall. Quick as the glint of silver on a mithril binding band, he slit the creature fine across the abdomen.

The shock of it held back the orc’s executing sword, oddly seemed to ripple the ether around them. The creature staggered, paused, but he had not sliced deep enough to topple him.

“Play on, Dioren!!” the creature snarled, his subsequent thrust entirely unaffected by any sense of wounding.

They flew back into battle, rough and unrelenting, though Dioren was so shaken by his missed chance, by the sure promise of his waiting death, that he could barely defend himself. The creature, however, hooked on some maddening rush of adrenaline, jabbed pierce after pierce into the emptiness beside his most vulnerable points, as if compelling him to fully engage. Dioren bared up bravely under this manic assault, but every swing further sapped his energies, until he was backed against the blunt trunk of an enormous tree and succumbed to weeping. His sword trenched into the mulch, the universal signal of surrender, he mumbled a hasty prayer of safekeeping to Mandos, then stood tall for his slaying.

The clog of tears in his eyes would save him from witnessing the kill stroke.

It never came down. Instead, he was petted by a soothing touch, seeking only his submission. Once his flinching was tamed, steady arms enveloped him; his sweat-soaked rescuer murmured reassurances in steaming breaths against his cheek. Suddenly, everything was uncertain. The forest smelt damp, but clean of murk. The elf that held him was unconscionably familiar, but not threateningly so. His mind was not crisp, as after such a ragged fight, but dense with fog. As his eyes were blotted by a silken sleeve, a face so welcome was revealed to him that Dioren thought he might weep again.

Rohrith.

*Elbereth*, he had had another of his spells.

The darkling elf’s face was rife with concern, his keen obsidian eyes entirely focused on his skittish friend.

“Dioren, return to me,” he urged him, with typical adamancy. “All is well, gwador-nin. All is ended.”

“I… I know it,” Dioren essayed, his throat raw. With a trembling sigh of relief, Rohrith yanked him into a crushing hug, holding his friend fast against further trouble, though none threatened.

“Forgive me,” he bleat. “For pushing you so. For allowing such fierce combat to continue thus… I should have thought!”

“We have not experienced such troubles before,” Dioren attempted to pacify him, imbuing his own force into the embrace. “Tis novel.”

“Novel!” Rohrith exclaimed, but did temper some.

Yet he clung quite longly to him, startlingly overwhelmed. When they finally drew back, Rohrith had blanched an ill, waif-like white, his movements sluggish and his head uncommonly weighted. Dioren’s memory buzzed aloud, remembering with suddenly stinging acuity the sword slice that had echoed through the air itself. His dreadful eyes dipped down to Rohrith’s middle, where a skirt of blood was seeping down his lap.

Before Dioren could even unleash a cry of shock, Rohrith collapsed into his arms.


End of Part One