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Old 12-02-2008, 03:05 PM   #273
Gwathagor
Shade with a Blade
 
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Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: A Rainy Night In Soho
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Gwathagor is a guest of Elrond in Rivendell.Gwathagor is a guest of Elrond in Rivendell.Gwathagor is a guest of Elrond in Rivendell.
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Jord had not slept that night. She had not even been in her room. After her brief meeting with Uldor, she had spent her night stalking the empty moonlit corridors of the great building, her body in pain and her mind wracked by doubt. She had felt so sure once that either Uldor or Ulfast would join her, would join Angband, but now Ulfast was dead and Uldor was undecided. Hour after hour she retraced her steps along the timber halls and passages, just as she retraced in her mind the course of the past days. She would pause sometimes, in the throne room or on the porch. Had she gone wrong? What else could she have done? For now the complete success - or complete failure - of her mission was in another man's hands. She could do nothing now. Nearing the stairs to the dungeon, she hurried past and tried not to think of the old man who had very nearly been her undoing. Indeed, she had come within a hand's breadth of failure and had only just pulled herself back from the brink. And yet she felt she was there again. If Uldor would not turn, what else could she do?

Whence this doubt? Jord thought. I am Thuringwethil and I have feasted on kings, men and elven. I am kin to gods - nay, I AM a god, a goddess, and I will not be gainsaid! Have we not always been victorious?

And yet she did not fully believe it, for she could not shake the memory of a certain pair - woodsman and elf princess - who had once done great harm to both her and her master. It had happened before, and she was afraid it could happen again. She was afraid. Fear ate at the edges of her mind, pursuing her from all sides. Her humanity frightened her and her supernatural power frightened her - could she call on it again? Would her human form not be burnt or broken by such power? Her fate frightened her, for it was out of sight and, she felt, out of reach. All was dark now before her, and behind her as well, for that way lay death. Perhaps death lay in wait for her again, just beyond, in the coming darkness? She could not tell.

And so it continued through the blackest of nights, until all she knew was doubt, and fear, and an overpowering sense of helplessness as the dawn grew ever nearer.

The first rays of morning found Jord, hooded and cloaked, standing on the stone porch of the great hall, facing away west where the darkness lingered longest.
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