Lapsus Memoriae [Rávamë's Bane: Book 1]

Part II : Chapter 12 ~ Stories In The Dark

A/N: We’ve hit the 50 review benchmark over on FF.net ladies and gents! Thank you so much! 

So to show my appreciation to all of you who’ve been lovely enough to contribute to the feedback: I’ll be posting two new chapters rapid-fire this time round! Chapter 12 was posted today at about 1:00am this morning (UK time) and Chapter 13 will be up later tonight, so keep your eyes peeled. :)

Hope you enjoy reading, and once again, thank you! You are all very much adored, dear readers. 

~ ❖ ~

Part II : Chapter 12

- Stories In The Dark -

~ ❖ ~

The biggest problem with wading through hallways full of decomposing corpses is the smell. 

Not the general horror-movie-grossness. Nor the occasional horrible crackle of the bones underfoot. Nor even the fact that in some places, we were having to literally clamber and climb over where they’d blocked the staircases. The smell was dense as smoke, and just refused to fade no matter how far or how long we walked.

‘I told you two days ago, boss. A little culumalda oil rubbed under the nose, and bam! Corpse smell gone!’

I didn’t respond. Not even to point out that culumalda oil — though it did have a lovely woody scent — when applied directly to the nose or mouth, had the nasty side effect of making you hallucinate about giant purple mushrooms. 

Do not ask me how I know that.

It might have been juvenile, and a bit futile, since Tink was privy to all but the deepest of my inner thoughts anyway. But I was still angry at what she’d done to me on the side of the lake. I’d refused to speak to her, or even acknowledge her, since we’d been sealed into Moria two and a half days ago.

‘You know, you’re not going to be able to ignore me forever, boss.’

For sheer contrary effect, I pretended not to have heard her, and mimed waving away a pesky fly that just wouldn’t go away.

Petty? Me? Surely not.

It wasn’t a good time to get into another argument with her though. We’d reached the lower levels of the actual mines of the Mines, and were having to pick our way across a lot of precarious bridges and narrow walkways. I wasn’t fully convinced that the creaking wooden structures were strong enough to support us all at once, and Gandalf seemed to think likewise. 

He’d ordered us to walk single file as he lead us through the dark — wizard, then Legolas, me, Gimli, Frodo, Sam, Boromir, Merry, Pippin, and finally Aragorn bringing up the rear.

I kept close behind the tall elf as we walked, almost close enough to feel the warmth radiating off him in the cold dank air of the abandoned caves. I didn’t like the idea of anyone in the Fellowship thinking that I was scared, least of all Legolas (who I’d stumbled into a couple of times when Gandalf had abruptly stopped without warning). But I just couldn’t convincingly hide the fact was. I felt a deep-seated, weirdly desperate longing to see the sky and stars again, and an inescapable dread at the thought of having to try and sleep down here for another night.

Legolas didn’t comment, nor did he complain. Not even once. Not even when my nose collided with his shoulder for the fifth time in an hour. He was clearly just as uncomfortable under the mountain as me, though he was much better at hiding. I was just close enough to see that his shoulders had tensed up, the muscles of his back wound tight as violin strings under his hunting greens.