[piosenniel]

Up the stairs, or what there were left of them . . . Endamir eyed the scorched beams that crossed the ceiling of this bastion's first floor. The beams were thick, but in some places they looked charred near through. Some of the flooring, he noted, for the second floor was gone altogether, with large holes showing through to this floor’s ceiling. Surely the Diviner would want to be lodged in accommodations more suited to his station. Of course, since he was probably solely spirit, perhaps he imagined himself in more luxury than was reality. But then, who was to say what was the true fabric of reality . . . might it not change according to the one having the experience . . .

Endamir’s musings on the nature of reality were brought up short as his foot slipped off a crumbled edge of the stone stair. ‘Pardon,’ he said, bumping forward into Lómwë. ‘Woolgathering . . . and at the wrong time, as usual.’

The area that opened out from the stair landing was cast much in shadow. Part of the roof had survived and only a dim light from the morning’s sun slanted in through the slender slits that were the windows. The darkness seemed menacing somehow, gathering as it did in corners and along the carved lintels of the windows. There was a faint scratching sound as of some one or some thing moving cautiously in the gloom.

‘We should have brought a torch of some sort. Light would at least be proof against what seems to lurk in the shadows, don’t you thi---?’

His question was cut off by a loud screeching and the explosion of movement from the far corner that came at them in a rush . . .