Chapter Text
The cart lurched over the stones, iron wheels shrieking at every turn. Chains bit into Galadriel’s wrists as she braced against the jolts, her hair matted with dust and sweat. Orc voices barked around her, coarse laughter spilling into the night. The stench of their beasts clung to the air, acrid and thick — but heavier still was the silence she carried in her chest.
Elrond’s face haunted her: sharp, unyielding.
She had pleaded with all the stubborn fire in her. “To leave now is to name Morgoth the victor. His hand is bound, yet his poison seeps still. Do we even have the right to abandon Men, Dwarves — all the free peoples — to a slow undoing?”
Bitterness had shadowed his reply. “They have centuries yet… something we are not granted. And you would risk what little remains of us for a hope too frail to name.”
That parting still burned. Regret pressed close — not for her choice, never that — but for the loss of his voice beside her. Had she known it would be their last meeting, she would at least have embraced her dearest friend. But she was determined to return with answers and had never imagined being captured along the way.
The cart jolted one last time before the ground leveled out. Through the bars, she caught the glow of torchlight, swaying in the dark like a restless sea of fireflies. Then the shapes came clear — dozens of them. Orcs moved in clusters, their coarse voices echoing between the ridges, iron striking iron as they hauled timbers and stone.
A sudden boom split the night. The earth trembled, dust shuddering loose from the cart’s frame. Orcs roared in approval, thrusting their torches toward the gaping maw of freshly blasted rock. They were tunneling.
While they moved through a cut passage, Galadriel glimpsed the lines of cells carved into the stone. In them huddled figures, curled in corners — some stirring at the noise, others sunk in fitful, uneasy sleep. The air smelled of damp stone and blood.
When the cart finally ground to a halt, a brute orc wrenched the door wide and seized her chain.
“Move, elf!”
She did not resist. Better to save what little strength remained. The shove sent her stumbling through the iron bars. The door clanged shut before she could right herself, chains rattling as the guard’s boots receded down the passage.
Galadriel drew a sharp breath and steadied herself against the damp wall. The air reeked of rusted iron and orc-breath. Weariness pressed on her like stone, yet her thoughts churned restlessly.
They had not been slaughtered. That meant use. Orcs never wasted captives unless they had labor for them — digging, hauling, breaking rock, raising the scaffolds of their corruption. She had seen it before.
Her jaw set. If they lived, they could be freed. She began to pace the narrow length of her cage, eyes flicking to cracks in the wall and the angle of the lock, mapping, measuring. The iron floor creaked softly under her boots with each turn.
“You’ll wear a hole clear through the floor if you keep that up.”
A male voice came from the darkness opposite. Calm. Almost amused.
She froze, scanning the shadows. Something shifted just beyond the bars of the neighboring cell: a pair of boots stretched into her line of sight, shackled wrists resting on bent knees. The rest of the man remained swallowed in gloom.
“How many are here?” she asked, voice low.
“Enough to keep the orcs busy. Not enough to walk out free.” His tone was dry, as though remarking on the weather.
She stepped closer. “And you would rather rot here than fight?”
“I’d rather not rush to meet the end,” he said casually. “You Elves think you can bend the world with sheer will. The world doesn’t bend. It breaks you first.”
The words were too even, too detached, as though he had witnessed such breaking more times than any mortal should. For a flicker, Galadriel felt the chill of being studied rather than mocked.
Her jaw tightened. “Then watch me break it.”
She thought she saw the shadow of a grin before she looked away.
“Try not to get us killed with you,” he muttered.
A faint rasp of chain followed, then his voice again, mild, almost curious: “What brought an elf to our rotten lands, so far from your shining realms?”
Her gaze sharpened. “Certainly not to share a cell with men who’ve given up hope.”
That earned a low, dark laugh from the shadows. He shifted, boots scraping faintly against the stone.
“Rest, elf,” he murmured at last, quieter. “You will need your energy tomorrow.”