[Kransha]

Brór wandered, slowly, throughout the area of the dusty, dirty, smoky room of the tower, still eying the stairwell nearby suspiciously, walking circumspect and cold. Dwali squatted not far off, still digging through the limp, twisted clumps of dead uruk that were heaped about all over. Brór stooped over, dragging his hefty mace upon the ground and letting it bounce across the floor wistfully. Soon, he picked it up, and stuffed it into his armored belt, behind the newly taken breastplate of burnt, charred steal and a hauberk of chain mail. He leaned down, his fingers curling around the deformed staff of an ax which he lifted curiously.

The ax bore, yet again, a resemblance that Brór dubbed uncanny to his ancient blade, a nameless weapon, cold and jagged as the ice upon the ivory-capped peaks of the highest mountains. He had swung that ax for many years, more than a century’s half he’d used it, cleaving countless orcs in twain and worse. When it had been given him as a child, he’d sat with a retrospective look upon his barely bearded face and an uncharacteristically pleasant twinkle in his shady eye, staring at it, his gaze overrunning its depths, its dimensions. Where was that now, that youthful pleasantry and naiveté? Alas, he knew where it was. The Tower of Cirith Ungol had stolen it from him, taken it unnaturally and unfairly. The ax he’d held, weighty back then, had fallen in the dust with a silent thump, left as a reminder of his failure there and now. He had never failed, not in combat, or even with his dulled wit, but he was still a failure as much as any other loathsome fool imprisoned. Now, though, his cynical reverie ended with the sound of echoing footsteps below. As his glued gaze pried itself from the ax, he looked glumly, but suddenly with more verve, to Dwali.

“You wish to follow, do you not?” Brór murmured, a smile again worming its way over his pursed lips. The smile did not materialize, though it was as forceful as it could be, and Brór’s look stayed a cold, slate hue of careless emptiness. But, thankfully for both dwarves, their meeting had at least tempered the shadow of pessimism with a sliver of sunny light, that of companionship, which was a merry thing for their kind. Walking forward and clutching his newly looted ax tightly in a wrinkly, creased palm, Brór continued coyly. “If you wish to hold your thoughts in, you shouldn’t plainly wear them on your face, lad.” He seemed strangely to be chiding the younger dwarf, though his smirk was still as invisible as ever it had been.

“Aye, I wish that.” The other dwarf said, standing from where he’d been silently, meditatively squatting and looking back at his peer. “But, I’ll wager you wish it as well.” The rumble, throaty and raspy, that beat heartily in Brór’s chest might have signaled a fierce, dwarven laugh, but naught came out. Instead, the very edge of his mouth elevated, suggesting a vague grin as he clapped the lad on the shoulder, striking his left hand, now in a tight gauntlet of dully colored metal shards riveted together, against the pauldrons strapped to Dwali’s upper arm. “I would be a false dwarf if I said I did not.” He said, his voice swelling as he pulled Dwali forward, and the two of them rushed, gallivanting down the winding stairs towards the first level of the tower and the courtyard. They were there faster than either of them had expected, and sprung out lithely into the courtyard, breathing in quick, stolen breaths as they took in the sight of two figures. Both were elves, nearest the door, one male and the other female. The dwarf duo headed speedily to the male elf, shadowy in gait, who sat upon the earth, nearly motionless. Though Brór knew not what he was called, the elf’s name was Morgoroth, and the female elf was called Raeis.

“The fleeing orc, you saw him?” Questioned Dwali subtly, his eyebrows peaked slightly with no otherwise changes in his more wizened features, which were reminiscent of some aged thing of more years than he. Brór still looked to be the oldest, of course, and older than the elves and men, for he had seen more days than the man, and more of time’s winds than the elves, though they were older than he. Both dwarves looked almost incredulously at the elves, one sitting and blankly staring in the yard’s corner, and the other still rummaging diligently through the orc corpses, which lay strewn messily across the rent tiles of dark, blood-spattered stone. The first, handling the bow leaned against his bent knees, looked up darkly at each dwarf. “Yes.” The Silvan Elf, whose name Brór did not know, said quietly, “He passed and fled.”

Now, many dwarves strongly disliked elves, elves of any kind, Silvan or no, though that’s what elves these were. The elf, though probably much older than Brór in years, had all the look of a fellow who’d seen many less. That alone was enough to infuriate Brór, but he dismissed that fact years ago. Elves had worked continually alongside him during his stay in the tower and prison, so petty prejudices were easily dismissed, but now they returned. With freedom came new feelings, and with expanded boundaries came renewed hostilities. Were these wretched beings going to wallow here and allow that orc to escape and inform others of his repugnant kind of the freed prisoners? That was foolishness and stupidity. Though Brór was brooding, even as he spoke, he could not abide this. He knew, deep down, that his dormant dislike for elves was making his mind exaggerate, but now that there was no orc whip to crack down upon his back, he didn’t care.

“And you did not give chase?” he said, fiery hostility renewed in him as he spoke, his fist clenching involuntarily, “You let him pass and did not even try to follow?”