𝕰𝖑𝖊𝖓𝖆

Chapter Ten: Darker Roads

I looked up. There was no colour - no yellows or blues, reds or pinks - to be seen in the sky. There was no sky to be seen at all, only a thick film of dancing white flecks separating it from my gaze. I'd never seen snow the likes of this before. Never felt the searing, agonizing bite of a substance so cold it felt hot. The blisteringly freezing wind bit at my ruby-red cheeks, punctured my lungs, stung my throat like acid. But still, we pressed on. My feet had long since become numb, and my legs had quickly fallen suit, but still, I forced them to move.

On my back, Sam weighed me down, the heat of his body the only warmth I received. Each of the hobbits was being carried above the snow. If they hadn't been, it would likely reach up to their stomachs, perhaps even chests. But I was in no mood to complain about the only heat source for miles around on my back. Though a scanty heat source it was. We continued on. And suddenly, my ears perked up, having caught a sound carried by the screeching wind. A deep, chanting voice bellowed out, the baritone voice carried by the air. A vile voice, one that knotted my stomach.

"There is a foul voice on the air," Legolas called over the howling wind.

"It's Saruman!" Gandalf belted just as a sickeningly loud crack drew our attention upwards.

Rocks - boulders bigger than carriages - tumbled over the mountainside with deadly cracks and crunches as they struck the walls of the mountain, plummeting to the ground. We made for the innermost rocky wall of the mountain, and I pulled Sam along with me, shielding him with my body as the rocks just narrowly passed us by, creating a sickening creak and rumble in the mountain.

"He's trying to bring down the mountain!" Aragorn said from in front of me, "Gandalf, we must turn back!"

I swiveled around to look behind us. The path over with we'd trod only moments ago was nearly invisible beneath the heavy snow that had already fallen atop it. We'd less chance of going back and managing to survive than we had going forward. But nonetheless, we had to make a decision. Now. Before Saruman succeeded in bringing down the mountain, and us along with it.

"No!" Gandalf refused, moving closer to the cliff's edge, and chanting back at the voice that attacked us from the clouds.

I, in turn, drew closer to the group, feeling unsafe at the tail end. With a sudden surge of power, the grey clouds above us were swept away by foul black ones. Turbulent storm clouds brought about by the voice in the air broiled above us, brewing a brutal attack on us inside its tumultuous dark mass. And all at once, a crack, louder than its precedents, rang out, echoing off the mountains. A bolt of lightning jarred through the film of snow and ice, blighting through the air until it met the peak of the mountain, releasing snow from its bed, and sending it plummeting down on top of us. I threw myself and the hobbit up against the mountain's wall, positioning myself so that I shielded him. Sam cried out, and then Gandalf, but before anyone else could so much as breathe, we were buried in countless feet of heavy white snow.

I gasped for breath under the snow, surprised that I could still suck oxygen into my lungs from beneath it, although it felt as though I was breathing through a rag. My whole body felt frozen, both in cold and under the crushing weight. There was nothing I could see but blackness, the snow ensuring that no light reached my eyes.

Then I felt Sam move beside me, and I knew I had to act fast, or else we'd both remain trapped beneath the snow. Above us, the muffled voices of the group just barely pierced through the snow and reached my ears. Legolas, Gimli, Gandalf, Aragorn, Boromir, the hobbits. I heard them all, their voices panicked and loud as they frantically dug through the snow to reach us. I fought with the weight that was pinning me down, digging at the snow with my hands to no avail. I felt a sick hopelessness spill over me. And then a light broke through the darkness that encased me, and with it, the howling of the wind through the muted silence, and I felt a firm grip wrap around my wrist.