Percy expected the secret door to under the mountain to be a little fancier. Not that it wasn't well hidden, of course. These dwarves could give Britomaris (he heard Apollo ranting the other day about her) a run for her money. The secret passage was a unassuming face of stone, which looked exactly like all the other walls of stone, except for the fact it had a small, barely noticeable rune in the wall that you had to squint to look at.
"Alright, here's the spot." Revealed Orein, with a flourish that might be used for revealing a huge mound of gold and blue coloured sweets. To be honest, He thought, There probably is a huge mound of treasure and jewels down here. "Are you sure?" Percy questioned, as he squinted at the dwarven rune at the top.
"Of course, I'm sure!" Rumbled Orein. "I am the keeper of the secret passageway to under the mountain!". "Is that sentence grammatically, correct?" Ask Percy. A voice rumbled from over head. "Of COURSE it's grammatically correct. Google Docs said that sentence was correct, so it is!" The voice stopped abruptly. Girme shook his head. "That's 2 forth wall breaks in 12 chapters, man. We gotta stop.". "3, you mean. You just pointed that out, so that's 3." Corrected Percy.
"Focus on the story, Percy!. Anyways, where was I?" Orein grumbled. "You were about the mutter the ancient words that lets you open the passage, right?" Percy spoke helpfully.
"Right." Orein cleared his throat and took a piece of grubby parchment from his pocket, which he unscrolled. "Are you kidding? You keep the password to the passage in your pocket?" Orein glared at him.
"I mean Orein, he's kinda right. Shouldn't you memorise the password first?" Said Girme with his bushy eyebrows raised.
"I was busy!" Orein cleared his throat again and hastily added, "I'm going to say it now, ok?" Then he muttered the incantation under his breath. "Are you actually saying 1324, 1324, 1324?" Whispered Girme. "Are you kidding me?" (A/N: F's in the paragraph, since the version of the chapter didn't save and NOW I HAVE TO WRITE IT AGAIN!!)
"I am not saying 1324,1324, 1324!" Orein glared at Girme with his one beady eye."What is it then?" Girme said while simultaneously trying to have a peek at the grubby parchment Orein was holding. Orein jerked the piece of paper away from Girme's eyes. "Um, excuse me. Can we actually go through the passage now?" Interrupted Percy. "Be patient, lad." Orein looked down at the parchment again. He began chanting softly under his breath, and the rune glowed brightly blue. Percy swore Orein was mumbling, "1.3.2.4.5."
They really need better passwords, Percy thought as he watched the solid stone slowly outline a shape of a door, albeit a glowing, magical door. "Cool door." Percy blurted out.
"Thank you." Orein looked immensely proud of himself.
They would've all died if it wasn't for Orein. Or more specifically, lopped to pieces by huge revolving axes, being burnt alive by pressure plate activated lava pit and impaled on spikes that come out of the ceiling. "There we go." Orein grunted, as he muttered a incantation that would stop the walls from closing in and squashing them all into liquids.
They wandered through the corridors, disabling various traps until they came to a wooden door. "Hold up." Orein stopped, causing Percy to bump into him. "One more trap." He took out the papers for a final time. Another trap? That's 16 just along a 500 metre passage. Percy thought. They must have a lot of enemies. Orein finished his spell, and the door swung open to what Percy thought was all the gold in the world. Jewels peeked out from every mound, and priceless shining armour and weaponry laid stacked on top. Girme and Orein stepped in, uimpressed. Percy followed them, slack-jawed. Gold tinkled with every step they made down the staircase.
This is probably why they laid all those traps, Said a part of his mind that was not focused on the ridiculous amount of gold there was. While they trod through halls of treasure, Girme thought it was the time to give Percy a history lesson.
"We mined for centuries to achieve this much gold." Girme said proudly. "Until Smaug came along, we were the a nation to be reckoned with!"
"Who's Smaug?" Asked Percy.
Girme raised his eyebrows and Oreins face suddenly fell. "Everyone's heard of Smaug. Smaug the destroyer. Smaug the rich."
Percy still looked puzzled, and Girme relented. "Ok, Smaug was the dragon that entered these halls before. He-"Girme stopped, then started again. "He forced us out of our mountain. The casualties were tremendous." Percy glanced around nervously, scanning the gold around him as if a huge fire-breathing lizard with wings would burst out of the treasure and eat them all.
"But a mortal of the river shot down the dragon. His daughter rules the city of Dale below." Girme assured him. "What's happening to the city of Dale?" Girme suddenly turned grave. "They have retreated to the inner fortifications. Our dwarf riders are trying to reach them, but the fighting is too strong. They will not survive if they don't receive reinforcements soon." They walked in silence after that, the tinkling of gold echoing through the halls being the only sound for a while after that.
They turned into what seemed like another huge hall of jewels. At the far end of the hall, there was a iron door, out of place in the sea of shiny metals. "There." Orein strode towards it, and Percy and Girme followed. They all reached the door and Orein put his hand on the door handle. Unfortunately, the door opened before he turned the door handle.. A sword almost decapitated him from the cracks of the door. Fortunately, the door knocked Orein off his balance and he landed on his hindquarters, preventing death via decapitation. A foul green-ish arm followed the sword. Percy's mind went instinctively into combat mode, and he rolled forward and grabbed the arm. He bent the arm against the door, pulling all of his bodyweight against it. The arm snapped with a sickening crack, where it was hastily withdrewed with some Black speech I will not translate because it was some very bad naughty words. Percy dashed in, leaving Girme to help Orein up, him being as flexible as the chunk of stone he mines, looking like a sea turtle upturned on its shell. Percy swiftly dodged the badly aimed sword and neatly lopped of the orcs head.
Girme finally got his hindquarters off the floor and waved his hammer behind Percy. The hammer was roughly the size of Zeus's ego, which if you didn't know was quite a sizable amount. "Why didn't you leave any to me? I would've crushed all of their skulls!" Percy was reminded of coach hedge more by the minute. Short? Check. Middle-aged? Check. Grumpy? Double check. Slightly bloodthirsty? Infinity check.
"There will be more for you later," Percy promised to Orein, who was still waving his axe. Then he began to hunch his back (This passage was barely enough for dwarf height). Orein followed in the middle, with Girme and his 2 axes behind.
Percy stopped at an intersection. He straightened up, and asked Orein: "Which way?" There were 8 exits, and they all looked identical. Before Orein could answer, a blur of goblin flashed from above. Percy barely put his sword up, and the goblin impaled itself on his blade, it's arms reached out to plunge a dagger into his head. More fell from the ceiling, and Orein pointed towards an exit. Percy couldn't really tell the difference between all the other tunnels, not that he was able to now that he was fighting a 3v1 against a particularly nasty group of orcs.
"Go! I'll come next!" Shouted Percy over the din as he parried 3 blades at once. The dwarves didn't need to be told twice and rolled into the tunnel. Time for me to go in, Percy thought. He finished disembowelling the orcs he was duelling with and made a furious dart towards the tunnel Orein pointed at.
The enemy suddenly closed all around Percy in unison, stopping him dead in his tracks. Their eyes had now an eerie blackness to it, like if their eyeballs had been replaced by miniature black holes. A complete void. Eternal darkness.. Percy flinched. That wasn't his head talking. It was something else, something massive and evil. You are never going to come back... The voice echoed throughout the cave, but no one was talking. You, will be my prize. The jewel that will bequeath my lands as I rule it. Percy shuddered at the voice, but said: "Show yourself! Or are you too cowardly as to even hide behind the servants that you command?"
You wish to see me? So be it. The entire room filled with darkness, and he couldn't do a thing about it.
A/N: Rewrote the end of the chapter, now its loads better! Sorry it took so long for me to update, I've become kinda lazy about this story. I promise I'll won't desert it!
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Of Swords and Fire (Percy Jackson/LOTR)
Fanfiction[Regularly updated] Middle - earth is on its knees. The east is in the hands of the enemy. The shire is now a fortress in these dark times. In New York, Percy was eating Mcdonalds with Nico, when he is once again shazamed by the gods and thrown in a...
