[Kransha]

With a hesitant slowness, Brór Stormhand moved, dragging weary legs, towards the “Dark Lord’s Stones” as they’d been named by a seemingly over-superstitious Grash. Stones were naught to be afraid of, or cowed by. The dwarf, though, felt at least some foreboding, as the blood in his veins chilled slightly. He was moving towards the stones, nearer and nearer. Soon, he was within their vicinity, and he felt nothing and saw nothing. He neared them more, drawing closer and closer, resolved unintentionally to take his time moving through them. Almost the whole rest of the party was through and past save Brór, who had exiled himself willingly to the back of the train after his argument with Grash. It was his fault that he’d ostracized himself, it was his outburst that had made them uneasy or angered, but he didn’t care. He didn’t even want to catch up. He just wanted to keep on walking…and walk he did, through the threshold of the stones.

It was strange. He heard a voice, a hollow but echoing voice, the kind that comes from neither throat nor chest nor mouth. It was a voice that spilled like acidic water into every orifice of his mind, slowly corroding the foundations that held his psyche together. Brór had never been fragile, in mind or body, but he suddenly felt unprotected, stripped of everything that held him together. He was alone in an abyss, alone in a void blacker than night, and yet, brighter than the sun a stone’s throw away. A searing, monstrous heat filled him and surrounded him, tongues of fire wrapping around him as chains would, but the touch of the nonexistent bonds was equally cold as it was hot, cold as the ice of Helcaraxe. His blood froze and bones burned, the tempering of each feeling tore into him, nearly rending his heart from him. He couldn’t see. His eyes were filled with that bright blackness that accosted him without relent or waver.

The voice in his mind was not speaking, but Brór was sure it was there. He heard its distant rumble, booming like claps of mighty heavenly thunder and shrieking like the most terrible of the four winds. It was whispering, perhaps, but the shattered dwarf couldn’t tell. It was not whispering to him. It was speaking to itself, or to some other creature in its dominion. Brór wished he could take this opportunity to challenge the voice and its owner, to call it out and cast it down with words or blows, but neither his mouth nor his mind could find purchase on sense enough to speak. The Eye was waiting for its chance, waiting for the broken form that lay, helpless and wordless before it, to be completely demoralized and totally vulnerable to any assault. There would be no counter-attack if he chose the right instant. Brór’s thoughts could not help but quake and tremble, anticipating the imminent incursion. Nothing was safe; nothing was sacred…not from Sauron.

It was preparing to speak, as best as he could tell. The rumble of the voice held him in animate suspense, a painful and drawn out suspense that leeched life from his being. The guttural thunder grew louder in his mind as the whispers in the background became clearer, more distinct. Now those whispers, formerly soft and ominous but now strong and terrible, formed into words, slurred together subtly to create speech and language. It was a dark speech, the Black Speech of Mordor, a tongue which Brór did not know. He got the impression, despite the resounding words, ringing like tremendous bells and echoing through his mind’s empty halls, that the speaker was not speaking to him, or at least not directly. He heard it preparing, readying itself to speak to him. He steeled himself feebly against the voice but, like a maddened hurricane he could not prevent or even hinder its coming. At last, the stormy rumbling bellowed and shrieked in his head, ready to speak at last, and he heard the voice of Sauron.

Nothing…

There was nothing. The voice faded like a snuffed-out candle, diminishing in an instant. Brór staggered, dazed, past the looming stones which cast their veiling shadow down, making the one that stretched behind him greater with their bulk. He managed to step out of the stones’ vicinity, feeling only dazed. His feet moved faster, unconsciously, and he found himself caught up with the remainder of the company, barely dawdling now. His mind fell from pain into reflection, contemplating what had just happened. He had expected agony, mental torture, something to overcome, but there was nothing. The Dark Lord had said nothing to sway him, nothing to cause him any pain. He was unscathed…But why?

Had Sauron said nothing because nothing needed to be said? Was he so far gone? Was his distrust, his hatred, already so great that the Dark Lord himself had nothing to say? Was he already, unwittingly, a servant of the Lidless Eye? No! He could not be deaf to the words of Sauron! He was not so haughty as to think that Sauron’s manipulations would not try to work on him. Did Sauron have no need of his services or did he already control them? The simple thought drove Brór’s mind into heedless ramblings as he considered the horrible truths he had contemplated a moment ago. The dwarf realized now that he had wanted Sauron to speak to him, wanted to confirm that he was still a being of light, despite his pessimism and his prejudice. He had hoped to be corroborated in the fact that Sauron needed him, or at least did not have him as a willing pawn. Could it be true? Was he, by conveying his prejudicial attitude towards the company and alienating the races, conducting the will of Sauron? If so…why couldn’t he just stop?

That was his job, his purpose. He had thought himself to be the voice of reason, but now he thought he might only be the voice of the shadow. His solid, unemotional negativity, which he had set out from Cirith Ungol with, had turned to unbridled darkness, a cloud that overshadowed him. Silently, still contemplating his unspoken duty, Brór Stormhand picked up the pace to approach his ‘companions,’ thinking and speaking to himself. That voice had, in fact, told him something, though it said nothing. It told him something that he had hoped was not true, but, in retrospect, probably was…