Lotr: Playing Minecraft in Middle-earth - 366

Chapter 366: A Warning on the Cold Wind

The Fellowship of the Ring, all nine of them, set out from Rivendell. Elrond watched their departing backs, and a sigh escaped him.

The world was sliding into chaos and unrest, and there was nowhere that could be spared.

Even the Free Cities, which had always seemed so peaceful that evil was almost unheard of there, were no exception. In the past, Sauron would never have dared to set his sights on them, but the moment their leader left, the North and South Vales were thrown into war.

Thranduil tried to lead his people to reinforce the front, only to run into a host of savage Orcs attacking neighbouring Dale the instant he emerged from the forest. Above them, Nazgûl wheeled through the sky.

Beorn’s son led men out to meet the Orc host head-on, holding the ground forces in place. At the same time, the Great Eagles swept down from the mountain peaks and tangled again and again with the Nazgûl and other vicious flying beasts, drawing their attention and keeping them from harrying the Men below.

This was the fourth wave of enemies to strike. No one knew where this new Orc host had come from.

The only thing that could be confirmed was that they were not from Dol Guldur, and they were not from Rohan or Isengard.

Thranduil was as baffled as anyone. He had no tidings at all, no warning, no clue.

Not until Lady Galadriel arrived.

She revealed the source of that fourth army.

Moria.

The Orcs there had been terrified by Levi. At one point, they had been slaughtered so thoroughly that they were nearly wiped out.

But under Sauron’s careful tending, a remnant had still survived there in secret. While the powers of the Free Peoples stood tall, they had kept their heads down and dared not show themselves. They would not even attack ordinary travellers.

Now, at their master’s command, they had crawled out at last, and the border guards of the Golden Wood had spotted them.

With turmoil rising on every front, Lady Galadriel had felt a premonition. Her gaze went north, beyond even the northern Men’s lands, to the Northern Waste, and she chose to act.

In the war-torn region, within a reception hall that was still quiet enough to speak in, Lady Galadriel met with Thranduil and Glorfindel, who had come to reinforce the effort.

With them was a legion commander from the Vale of Anduin, one of the Free Cities’ officers.

Three Elves and a legion commander held a small council together, mainly discussing the situation nearby and the repeated delays in rescuing Saruman.

The commander mostly listened. His duty was to coordinate with the Elves according to Levi’s written instructions.

Lady Galadriel spoke first.

“I can feel it. The North’s legend is fulfilling an obligation that should never have fallen to him. Our long-lost kin are returning.”

“Kin?” Thranduil echoed, puzzled.

Among the three Elves present, he was the youngest, only a little over five thousand years old. The other two were older by a full age, or even two, and their power far surpassed his.

Both of them had once bathed in the holy light of the Two Trees. If they stood in a room at night, there was no need to light a lamp. They shone.

“In the time of my birth,” Lady Galadriel explained, “many Elves were seized by Morgoth and tormented. Though Morgoth was defeated at last and his stronghold was broken, many of the taken were never accounted for. Their fate remains unknown.”

“I sense that Levi is searching for them in a place far below and far beyond, and that he is freeing them and sending them home to Valinor.”

“A great deed,” Glorfindel said in sincere praise.

Thranduil nodded as well, though his feeling ran less deep. He agreed and honoured the act, but the matter did not strike him as personally as it did the others.

Compared with two who had lived through the age when many Elves were taken, his impression of it was faint. Still, his lore was broad and deep enough that the moment they spoke of it, he remembered the old grief.

Behind their words, the Vale commander quietly felt a weight lift from his chest.

So Lord Levi was only away in some far place, occupied with urgent business, not harmed by some accident.

As that thought took shape, the commander lifted his head slightly and realised something else.

This message might have been spoken on purpose, so that he could carry it back and let the various realms know, so they would not panic.

Elves… every movement, every word, seemed to carry meaning. You had to listen carefully to catch it.

The commander understood at once.

And yet…

He raised his head again, looking at Lady Galadriel, who had suddenly gone still, as if struck by something unseen.

A thread of doubt rose in his heart.

What now? What had happened?

…

“Haah…”

Outside the fortress of Utumno, Levi let out a long breath and blew away a flicker of flame.

The fighting had been ferocious. Great sections of the fortress exterior had collapsed. There were gouges from impacts, and wide black scars where fire had licked the stone.

His rune shield had shattered who knew how many times, drained and recharged, recharged and drained again. If the essentia dropped by slain creatures had not been replenishing his staff, the staff’s stored essentia would have run dry long ago.

He slapped at the stubborn flames still clinging to him, then rolled his shoulders and stood up from atop the vast, drained corpse of a Balrog.

“Dangerous enough,” he muttered.

A swarm of grotesque, hulking beasts had rushed him all at once, driven forward by a Balrog behind them.

In the cramped fortress, where there was little room to manoeuvre, they had jammed the passage completely. More than once, their combined pressure had genuinely hurt Levi and threatened his true body.

In the end, he had still come out on top.

Now, looking down, none of the beasts were intact, and the Balrog’s wings beneath his feet had been hacked to pieces.

Once Levi had cleared the beasts one by one and beaten the Balrog into a battered state, it had tried to flee.

It had not mattered.

Levi had stopped worrying about conserving resources. He had drawn out the Dragonbone Bow, etched with Strength V, and paired it with Dragonbone Arrows to shoot the creature down. Then he had taken his greatsword and chopped apart those huge wings, whether they were true flesh or living fire.

Now the Balrog, too, had become nothing but materials.

And yet…

Even with looting on his side, it had only dropped a single Flame of Udûn. Levi could not help feeling mildly displeased.

This Balrog felt a little weaker than the one he had encountered in Moria. Weaker even than the one he had killed with his own hands before.

Of course, it might have been an illusion. Levi himself was not the same anymore. Compared with his first clash with a Balrog, he was now more than twice as strong.

After dealing with the Balrog that had practically delivered itself to his doorstep, Levi carved through the fortress and purged every dark creature he could find.

When he was sure nothing remained, he began digging deeper.

Tap.

Near the centre of the fortress, he broke through a thick wall and stepped into a room that was, for this place, strangely open.

“To find somewhere this well preserved…”

With a fresh night-vision potion warming his belly, Levi took in the room’s layout.

There was nothing.

Nothing at all, except for a black, deep shaft in the centre that led down.

The stairway fell away without end. You could not see the bottom, and it was not even whole. At some point, it broke away entirely.

Looking down from the edge, it was like staring into a void. There was no bottom. It made the heart quail.

Go down?

The moment that thought rose, something descended upon him.

No. Not so much a sign, this time, as a warning.

Unlike before, this warning came from another presence entirely.

A cold wind crossed an immense distance from the surface world, slipped down into the deep, entered the fortress, and brushed Levi’s face, stirring his hair and delivering its meaning without words.

A warning from Manwë Súlimo, Lord of the Breath of Arda, Elder King and chief of the Valar, who watches over the world and seeks to set its wrongs right.

Levi understood its message.

“Below this shaft is malice gathered and hidden in its purest extreme. A fallen world of darkness. A remnant evil will broods over it, cutting it off from all outside, even from the awareness of the Valar.”

The Valar were forbidden to interfere too directly in the affairs of Middle-earth. Their dwelling place had long been set apart from Arda by the One who made the world.

Even with only that separation, they were already distant. With another barrier laid atop it, under so many limits, if Levi went deeper still, even the Valar might not be able to help him.

From that point on, everything would depend on him.

Every craft had its master.

Perhaps there was a Vala who, by sheer strength alone, could beat Morgoth to his knees, shatter mountains and rivers with a single blow, even crack the very lands.

But in certain other matters, they might truly not match Morgoth.

Just as in this.

And yet…

“A new challenge, then. That suits me,” Levi said, smiling faintly.

He stepped forward and jumped into the void.

A wind coiled around him at once, wrapping him in a ward woven into the world’s own order, so that no fall or blow could harm him.

…

“I can no longer sense him.”

Far away, Lady Galadriel stared north, her eyes unfocused, confusion creeping into her face.

“What do you mean?” Thranduil asked sharply, turning towards her.

Glorfindel, who had experience with such matters, answered for her.

“Levi has left this world.”