View Single Post
Old 02-08-2003, 12:50 AM   #332
Gandalf_theGrey
Visionary Spirit
 
Join Date: May 2002
Posts: 633
Gandalf_theGrey has just left Hobbiton.
Sting

* It took Volondil three thwacking thrusts of his sword-edge to cleave the lock-and-bolt device holding fast the iron door. At last, the entire knob broke clean off with a clank to the dank floor. Water trickled out from underneath the iron door, wetting the muddy cracks in the mildewed flagstone that served as flooring in this outer portion of Castle Maladil. *

* Volondil heaved the door open. The door exhaled a chill groan, revealing a smithy unused for forging since the Second Age. Holly's hooded lantern dimly showed the smithy's means of production: forge, cracked table, anvils, hammers and tongs, a vise, molds for keys and weapons ... as well as examples of the objects produced: handfuls of spikes, locks and keys, horseshoes, pot racks atop the table, ... cloak racks and unfinished bits of armor moldering away in fetid pools of filth on the floor.

* Rotting sacks festered humbly in dark corners. Stacks of gold pieces lay piled near the sacks, neatly arranged as if carefully counted. The floor dropped away along the back wall into an erratically dug hole reaching shadowed depths unknown and unseen. Just as Volondil, Holly, Olo and Bird were getting the sense that a malevolent living presence had taken up residence here, they heard a sly squish-flap-flip sound. *

* Too suddenly it came upon them ... Clammy fingers knocked the lantern from Holly's hands, then wrapped themselves around her neck and pulled the Hobbit towards the thing's burrowed cellar. *
Gandalf_theGrey is offline