The villagers had finally found some solidarity in their voting on the second Day of this terror – well, sort of. Two separate mobs developed, one surrounding
Oddwen and the other
Eomer of the Rohirrim in the village square.
“Who shall we get first? The idiot or the mariner?” somebody asked.
“I will die first,”
Eomer and
Oddwen replied simultaneously. They looked at one another sheepishly, for neither suspected the other. There was a short silence, and then, “the Lady may go first, if she so wills.”
Oddwen proffered herself to be slain, but the villagers weren’t quite sure what to do. They didn’t want to make another mistake… was the evidence sufficient? But the deed had to be done. A villager walked up to her, knife drawn, asking what she would like.
“I shall be serious for a moment. I want you to build a gallows, so that no more should suffer as I must now suffer. Consider this my dying wish.”
And saying so, she took the knife from his hand and slew herself. Her body collapsed to the ground with a dull thud. The villagers surrounded her, waiting for a transformation, breath drawn.
They breathed out, not through relief but through want of fresh air. The tenseness of the moment passed, and still nothing happened. It was evident that another innocent was dead.
The mob turned angrily on
Eomer of the Rohirrim, snarling and little better than wolves themselves. Senselessly, they blamed him for
Oddwen’s death.
“Ulmo shall be his judge!” they declared. “Take him to the river!”
Eomer informed them that he was quite capable of walking, and would take himself to the river if they would follow him. They perambulated to the nearby stream whence they drew their water; it was a tributary of the river Malduin that flowed into Teiglin that flowed into Sirion the Great and thence to the Sea. “So shall I come to Ulmo…” said the rapscallion, gazing sadly down the river, and in his death he looked both noble and fair.
“Bind his arms and his legs and throw him into the river! If he is guilty, then Ulmo shall reject him, and he shall float upon the water. Then we shall draw him out and kill him! If he is innocent, Ulmo shall demand of him a hug, and he shall be drawn to the river’s bed. There shall he drown and die a noble death.”
Eomer looked unconvinced. “Am I the only person who sees a flaw with that plan?” he asked. But they ignored him, and bound him, and cast him into the water. He splashed and fell deep into the running stream, and bounced on its bed. Forced to inhale the water, he asphyxiated.
“Ulmo wanted a hug from him… he is innocent!” the villagers said.
The body floated up again, driven by the force of the water.
“He is guilty!”
The body hugged the stream-bed once more. But his body had still not transformed, and it was now clear that he was innocent of all guilt, other than perhaps being a bit of a rogue.
“Alas!” Wailed the women, for
Eomer was much loved before the coming of the werewolves. “Who could do such a horrible thing to such a handsome man?” His body drifted away to be received by the sea, bobbing up and down at intervals.
The villagers held a small meeting, decided that the current method of allowing guilt to be judged by the streams didn’t really work. By a vote of thirteen to none, it was removed from the village law-books, though unfortunately some foolish people took it up again several millennia later.
Living:
Anguirel
Celuien
dancing spawn of ungoliant
Esgallhugwen
Evisse the Blue
Feanor of the Peredhil
Firefoot
Hookbill the Goomba
Lalaith
littlemanpoet
Nilpaurion Felagund
Saurreg
the phantom
Dead:
the guy who be short (Villager) - partially consumer by werewolves on NIGHT 1.
Kath (Ranger) - lynched by villagers on DAY 1.
Azaelia of Willowbottom (Villager) - turned into a pincushion on NIGHT 2.
Oddwen (Villager) - lynched with kitchen utensils on DAY 2.
Eomer of the Rohirrim (Villager) - lynched and drowned on DAY 2.
Score:
Werewolves: 3
Villagers: 10
It is now NIGHT 3. NIGHT will end tomorrow at 5:30pm BST, 1:30pm EST, 12:30pm CST, that is 24 hours from now (check time of post). NIGHT may end earlier if all NIGHT-time PMs are received before then.
Edit: Lalaith, I'm not going to eat you or anything, but in future could you please limit such posts to the next day? Giving that explanation wasn't really that necessary. Thanks.
