Weeks are passing without our quest to advance in the slightest. This huge fortress of stone unveils its qualities and its dangers. Of the dangers a wound burning still from some unknown poison on low on my jaw is bound to remind a while longer.
Veryacano is searching council with the dwarfs at times for long –perhaps some that would not welcome me in their presence- or prefers to vanish alone and silent. A feeling I could not explain urges me to try to find a way south, where the darker depths of this cave lay their unwelcoming night.
The naugrim have managed to set a transport system, using as mounts tamed mountain goats. I ventured south to the place they call Deep Descent riding one of this goats trained to know the road in the maze and avoid gaps and foes alike. From there south I did not receive a beast but the advice to follow the old railway used for ore transportation and the advice to not venture alone. I trusted my arrows to find their target even in the darkness of Moria and the Celebiphant and Celaircann if a foe reached that close for their blades to bite. I ventured south towards whatever was playing the strings of intuition and hope.
I could hear from far the noise in the guarded camps of Orcs and Goblins and avoid them, searching not walked corridors and shadows that allowed a thin silhouette in a dark hooded cloak to become one with the wall if need arise. Only few times I needed to clear my way with a carefully aimed arrow to some lone guard until a darker even tunnel opened before me and a strident shriekening welcomed me before my eyes found the goblin. Two steps and my dagger found his heart but I knew it is time to defend myself, back to a wall for such call is likely to call others. I could only hope not many would hear it that far.
And they came.. Shorter than me and not strong but fast and wild, attacking with teeth and blades alike and the echo of the cave making their cries more frightening than those of their brethren in Ered Luin. I was too busy to let Celebiphant and Celaircann write their death in blood to count them but not more than a dozen. I was defending and hoping their screams will not get others. Suddenly I heard something above me and a creature fell on my back, his arms around my neck and a blade seeking my throat. He must have climbed the wall and jumped. I turned fast and managed to shake him of my back into the blades of his brethren and pushed my enemies to the middle of the room. Surrounded was still better than giving them a way to come from above me. More fell before silence found again its shelter in the tunnel. I had to leave fast, I had no idea if I killed them all or some flew to get help and I had no intention to check.
My idea that our hidden friend would show up to the rescue from the darkness if I get in danger seemd suddenly childish and I felt ridiculous for sharing it with Veryacano and grateful for him not commenting upon it. No, the rumor in the dwarf camps of two elves wandering Moria in search of a third seemed suddenly not enough to bring him to us. Something was telling me to run south but logic prevailed this time: I did not know the way to whatever encampment south (The Cellar they called it?) and I probably would have a small horde of warned goblins –or worse- searching me. It was more likely for them to guard the way I would take to the safety behind me, in the Deep Descent, but at least I knew the way and I was faster than them.
I ran back silently and listening to the noises of the cave. For a while I thought I am followed but be it my imagination or real it did not follow me to the light of the dwarven fires of Deep Descent encampment.
The wound on my neck was burning me, sign of the blade being poisoned. I had the occasion to try on myself the cures I brought. I feel by now that my body is handling the poison and the fever of the first day passed. The wound is painful but superficial and hard to notice at the limit of my high collar. My companion either did not notice it or chose not to open the subject and for sure I do not intend to. I presume I should bow to experience and follow his plan. But I so wish I could do something! The shriekening of goblins is still better music then the water dropping from the ceiling and better sight than the cold stone, moisty and slippery as soon as you go further from the torches and campfires of the dwarfs.
