Book III: The Last Tale of Legolas Lasgalen

Chapter I: Prince of Mirkwood

The waters were peaceful as the lore of ages said they were. I could see we were still days from the everlasting twilight of Aman, but I knew in my heart that once we made it there, I would see my family once more. I watched as the four elves on board spoke quietly amongst themselves. We were the last of our kin to sail to Eldamar. The presence of a Prince from the House of Durin did not seem unusual to them after all that had happened.

As Gimli slept by the bow, I could not help but think about the past. I would miss my home and all  I had left behind in Arda. The world I had once called home had changed. The moment I saw Aragorn crowned king of Arnor and Gondor, I could feel a change in the air. After everything the Fellowship had accomplished, I knew I would become little more than a myth--a legend at best. With the sealing of Aglarond, the Dwarves joined the Elves' fate in a world we helped to create.

As the waves of the sea carried us toward the Undying Lands, I watched the final vestiges of Arda fade into mists of time. The land where I was born would become a memory I would remember forever in quiet disbelief with a curious longing. My adventures were ending even as my life would go on forever. In that world, I began life as the son of Thranduil, the Elvenking of Eryn Lasgalen--known for most of my childhood as Mirkwood. I was on my last journey from which I would never return. Who would I become beyond the shores of Arda?

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I came into this world in Eryn Galen as Legolas Lasgalen Thranduillion in the month of Lótessë in the forty-first year of the Third Age. My mother was Queen Êlúriel Nenluin, a Nandorin from the lost land of Ossiriand. She died when I was still an elfling, but I remember she was beautiful and kind. Before I was conceived, my parents took Târthon, the son of my father's best friend Melros. After he perished at Dagorlad during the War of the Last Alliance, his wife Árendil could not bear her grief and sailed to the Undying Lands, leaving her son in their care. When I was old enough to understand, I was sad for Târthon but glad to have a brother.

My grandfather Oropher had died in the same battle that took Târthon's father, but my grandmother Nimeithel was there to see me come into the world before she left for Aman with my mother's father, Nendúril. It would be the beginning of darkness for the Elves of Eryn Galen.