Kingsfoil [Thranduil] LOTR

Helpless

First Age, 502:

It was not the smoke that choked Thranduil the most, but the overwhelming darkness—the haze between blurry shapes in the night, the undefined voices, shrieks, the utter blindness.

Menegroth had fallen. The king was dead, and in her grief, the queen fled. Driven by their grief and the need to avenge their kin, the dwarven army of Nogrod sacked the fortress, the kingdom, delivered ruin to the once mighty stronghold of Thingol. All was lost.

Now darkness descended, and the great stone bridge across the Esgalduin was slick with the blood of the fallen.

Thranduil lurched forward, his hand pressed hotly against his side. His garrison had taken up defense of the causeway, and the casualties...he drew a ragged breath...the casualties devastated him. He had been struck in the side by a dwarven lance, knocked against the wall as the hoard thundered savagely past him and into the city, while his friends and fellow guards tried desperately to withstand their charge. His captain's cry to arms still rung in his ears as did the cries of the fallen. It was too much. Much too painful. Now in the aftermath, the great citadel of Menegroth lay wasted, and all Thranduil wanted was to find his father, and he dared to hope, his mother.

The last he saw of his father had been as Oropher raced past him to defend the enormous stone gates to the entrance of the city, but those gates had been overrun by the dwarves. He knew that now. Seeing the destruction, the fallen stones, the torn iron hinges, Thranduil lost hope that his father might have survived. Bodies littered the ground amid fallen weapons, bloodied banners, the refuse of war.

A steady stream of survivors now flowed from the halls, picking their way carefully around the fallen and across the bridge, leaving the once great realm of Doriath as refugees, and Thranduil peered through the darkness at the line of weary faces, streaked with soot and sorrow. He clung to a fragile hope that any minute he might see his mother's heart-shaped face or the silhouette of his father's armor. His heart was a riot of pain and fury and grief and fear.

Biting back a groan, Thranduil shifted and tenderly prodded his side where the lance had struck him, rent his mail, and probably broken several of his ribs. He could not stand this, the waiting...and waiting, through the dark and straggling line of pitiful elves, once proud and now humbled by loss. So Thranduil clutching his side, cut a path back through the survivors and headed toward the gate.

His eyes watered and strained to see more clearly through the smoke, and the things he did see, he wished he could unsee: a wife silently holding the hand of her fallen husband, a half-burned doll dropped amid the ashes, the wide dead eyes of his friend Irlath staring up at him from the rubble of the gate.

Until at last, he caught the glow of the few remaining torches against the bright sheen of his father's hair, coming around the corner and toward the main entrance. Then the crowd thinned. His father carried his mother. Thranduil's heart leapt in his throat, and he blindly pushed his way past the injured and slow moving.

"Father," he meant to say, but the word came out as a strangled sob as he beheld his mother and the grief in his father's eyes. His mother, beautiful and kind, lay still in his father's arms, the long white fall of her gown stained crimson.

They left Doriath that night and did not return.

. - . - .

March 10th, 3019

The sun sank behind the trees, casting long shadows around the camp, and only a few fires burned greedily. The stars were veiled, and the Elvenking sat alone in his tent, his heart uneasy. His troops were ready, captains set, the assault and strategy meticulously planned. The camp was quiet, and when his warriors spoke, it was in reverent whispers set against the scraping of branches pushed by the wind, the creak of ancient trees waiting for what would come. Tomorrow, they would battle the enemy.