[Durelin]

The sun had fully risen from behind the Mountains of Mist, but the scene in the city had only darkened. Maegisil had already entered back into his old ways, mind and body. To him, now, he saw they were better days, and he did not understand how he could have thought otherwise only a month or so before this night. He dodged a crooked axe that slashed roughly at his chest, and brought his own blade up to cut his assailant across the face, which he immediately followed up with a slash across the orc's chest in his back swing. Another orc came at him, and he rushed forward to meet it. He had taken a few running strides, and had his sword pulled back, prepared to thrust it forward with all his might in order to pierce the creature's armour, when he suddenly tripped on something large on the ground. He fell to the ground, and the air painfully rushed out of his lungs. But he immediately rolled to his right and shot back up on his feet, escaping the orc's blade with only a slash across his back that only made him more pleased when he saw it dead at his feet.

Then he turned to see what it was he had tripped over. Upon seeing it, he knew why he had fallen over so easily, and so heavily. It was a body. The pale skin and dark hair and elegant pointed ears...the blood soaked clothes and ransacked body, life roughly stolen from it...a dead elf. It lay on its side, its back facing Maegisil. He could see a gash in its back, blood dried, with the bugs already getting to it. He stood frozen, wide-eyed, his cheeks pale. He could not see its face, and he was afraid to. He knew it was not Sairien, though that had been his immediate thought at first glance, but who knew who it could be. Who knew if he had seen them alive only a day before...

He reached a hand around to his back, and felt at the wound. It was a rather small slash on the lower right, obviously due to the orc's sword sneaking in between the back and breast plates of his armour. It was small, but deep. He could feel the blood soaking the thick shirt underneath his armour, and when he pulled his hand back around in front of him, he looked down at it to see the redness smeared all over it. Let Ilúvatar see that you have already shed blood, and tears, and need shed no more! He could hear his wife's voice in his head, remembering clearly the deep emotion in it, bordering on despair. Perhaps it had been despair. It made Maegisil want to scream, shout his curses to Ilúvatar himself...

But he did not even have another moment to wipe the blood from his hand before another orc rushed at him, some kind of makeshift mace in his hand. Maegisil finally let out the scream he had been holding in as he savagely cut the orc across its stomach, opening it wide for blood to flow out and splash upon the elf's face, and for the creature's gory entrails to fall to the ground as it did. A few more orcs, another cut - this time on his left lower leg - and he found himself turning to see wide lifeless eyes staring up at him. He felt something rise in his stomach, and he suddenly felt the need to empty it of its contents. How had he come back to this point? It had felt like he had moved so very far up the street, attacking the invaders of his city. But he was not the attacker, he was the defender. His people were dying, his city was being overrun, and he was being forced back up the street. And so he came back to meet the dead elf, face to face. Its mouth hung open crookedly, and its skin was almost bluish, so pale... He watched as something black crawled out of its parted lips. He felt himself choke, and he just had time to turn his head and bend down before he emptied his stomach.

Shaking, cold, and with his whole body aching, he ran. It was time to go back to the palace. He was not sure why, but he kept running, and he had not the strength to argue with where his feet took him. He heard the loud roar of thousands of voices, telling him that the orcs had broken through the defenses on the main street of the eastern side of the city. It could not take them much longer to reach the palace. He shuddered, and ran faster.