[Anguirel]

"Malris...it calls... Cirlach... Cirlach calls to... iron... Malris, the chains... I can hear the chains... they threaten to bind me... Malris, make it stop, please make it stop..."

Tasareni grasped Malris's leg in utter supplication. For his part, he did not know what to do. He had sheathed his prized sword, but still it seemed to be having ever more explicit effects of Tasa's mind. Malris even considered trying to knock out his friend, but he had no way of knowing whether she found peace in unconsciousness, and besides, his every remaining particle of strength was required to continually plough the drear lake with his ashen pole...

"Malris... please..."

"I have to keep on," he muttered. "You see what is behind us...I am sorry..."

But Tasa's face was almost unrecognisable in the clutch of the voice calling to her, whether it was madness or something far worse. She would not now be gainsaid, and seized hold of him in a grip whose tightness was bred of a sharp need for reassurance. Now it was Malris who had to plead.

"It is almost upon us...you must let me go on...please, Tasa..."

Her weight collapsed in its full force upon him and he fell back, the pole slipping from his hand, though fortuitously remaining on the bank. There was a colossal sound like a pair of lips, swelled by perversion, licking themselves. The frightful many-bodied ruler of the depths was upon them, and did not intend to let its prey escape. Tasa seemed to be out cold again following this second fall, and Malris felt all the sullied weariness of defeat crush what remained of his will to act also...

Curufin's forge in the Prince's quarters at Himring's keep.

Malris stood alone, puzzled. Why had his lord and friend, the trouble-making but charming son of Feanor, and in qualities the most like his father...why had he not arrived? They had been to meet here, and Curufin was always punctual.

“Utulie’n aurë!” Curufin sprung from beneath the covering he had used to conceal himself as his friend approached. Uncertain of his sportive mood, Malris half-smiled as he placed hand on hilt.

"Ah, Malris, you never were quick to take a jest," Curufin remarked. "Stop playing with that old needle of yours and have a look at what I just threatened you with."

"It is a fine creation," Malris conceded with mock-gravity as he surveyed the weapon. "A doughty companion in battle, this will be."

"You have the right of it, Malris...for you. 'Tis a gift long-deserved. It is named Cirlach. Take it up."

The lake. The raft. The Thing. The door to Mandos seems to hover beyond the horror that will be physical death. The cynical, witty, voice now oddly serious.

"It is named Cirlach. Cast it away."

Malris leapt up at once to his full height. He had never been tall among the Noldor, but the purpose in his eyes now lent him stature.

“Utulie’n aurë!”

He cast away the sword, and felt run through his heart two simultaneous, contradictory emotions-loss, tangled with frustration, and certainty, at last, that he had done the right thing. The vile enemy was now all about them, resembling a foetid morass, yet a dreadfully resilient one.

Cirlach sank into it up to the hilt, and then, with a cacophony of splintering, smash, scattering steel, it was no more. The Foe-Thing recoiled, lines of white and red flame burning up and down it, and it retreated; attempting to sink below to hind relief and its grotto home, but unable to escape the wrath of the fire. Malris and Tasa, who awoke with bemusement but definite relief on her features, watched the beacon of victory burn as they punted the raft to the lake's hither shore.