Chapter Text
All I could feel was the water swirling and surging around me. I was sucked into its depths, being pulled and pushed in all directions, tossed around like a helpless ragdoll. A stream of bubbles formed as the last of my air left my mouth.
Then, suddenly, a stabbing pain in my stomach.
My body reeled from the shock and pain, my barely conscious mind struggling to understand what was happening now. Drowning, I had expected. That’s what would happen when caught in tumultuous waters. But being stabbed? How was I even stabbed underwater?
The dark, murky waters around me were becoming darker. Everything was fading to black as my lack of oxygen was starting to cause me to lose my consciousness.
However, the blackness was all of a sudden cast away by light.
A bright ball of light was floating in front of me. And it kept growing and growing. Becoming brighter and brighter, until I was completely engulfed in light.
Had I already died? Was this me being taken to the afterlife?
Then, the water around me was somehow gone. Instead, I was surrounded by air. Air rushing upward as I went speeding downward. Falling.
Thud!
I hit hard ground, finally losing consciousness.
“And you encountered the spiders here?” Thranduil said as his eyes darted around, taking in their surroundings.
“Yes, we fought some here during our last patrol,” Legolas answered his father. “We killed most of them, but some escaped, fleeing deeper into the forest.”
The Elvenking and his son were riding side by side on a forest path. Legolas on a horse, Thranduil on his elk. A small contingent of elven guards was walking behind them on foot.
Thranduil had become concerned due to reports of the spiders’ activities steadily increasing, especially when the patrol that his own son was a part of had a recent encounter with these creatures. Thus, he had decided to check on the problem himself. There were currently no signs of the spiders, though.
However, as they walked further down the path, a bright ball of light suddenly appeared in front of them.
Thranduil and Legolas immediately pulled on the reins of their steeds, making the animals halt in their tracks. The guards quickly went into action, drawing their weapons and protectively surrounding the king and the prince.
“What is that?” Legolas questioned as he pulled an arrow out of his quiver, nocking the arrow to his bow and pointing right at the ball of light, which was hovering a few feet above the ground, bobbing up and down a little.
Thranduil did not answer. He did not know either. But floating balls of light did not just randomly appear in the forest. Something odd was going on. The king’s eyes narrowed suspiciously as he observed the ball.
“Should we approach it, Your Majesty?” one of the guards asked.
Before Thranduil could answer, however, the ball glowed brighter. Then, a body fell out of the ball, landing face down on the ground.
As soon as this person hit the forest floor, the ball of light disappeared, leaving the area marginally darker than before.
After a few seconds of tense silence, Thranduil motioned with his hand, indicating to his guards to check on the fallen body. The guards cautiously approached the body, but it did not stir. Upon getting a closer look, a guard called over back to the king—
“It appears to be a human woman, my liege.”
Thranduil and Legolas exchanged a confused glance with each other. A human woman fell out of a ball of light? The two royals dismounted from their steeds and approached the woman, needing to see this closer with their own eyes.
It was a human, indeed. Female. However, she was dressed in the strangest of clothes. Yes, humans tended to dress differently from elves, but this woman’s clothing was unlike anything the elves had ever seen before. Not only the style, but also the materials.
And adding even more to the strangeness of the situation was that the human was soaking wet. From the top of her head to the tips of her footwear, her entire body and all of her clothes were entirely drenched with water.
Apart from the water, though, another liquid was seeping out from below her, slowly spreading on the ground. Bright red, it was clearly—
“That is blood,” Legolas said with a frown.
“Tauriel, flip her over,” Thranduil ordered sharply.
The red-haired captain immediately stepped forward, taking hold of the human and turning her around so that she faced the sky above instead. And the elves immediately saw the source of the blood.
There was a gaping wound on the human’s stomach, with the broken remains of what appeared to have been a tree trunk or branch still sticking out of her body.
Tauriel put two fingers on the human’s neck, checking for a pulse. And she found one. Weak, but present nonetheless.
“She is still alive,” she told the king.
“We will take her back with us,” Thranduil decided instantly. “Bring her to the healers. Keep her alive at all costs.”
As Tauriel and a few other guards started to lift up the woman, Legolas raised an eyebrow at his father. “You are allowing a human into our kingdom?”
The Elvenking was not known for letting outsiders into his kingdom. Even elves on diplomatic duties from other elven realms were rarely allowed in. Much less those from other races. Yet the king was bringing along this human into the kingdom? Certainly, an injured woman must be helped—it was the proper, chivalrous thing to do. But Legolas would have thought that his father would initially be against the idea of taking in an outsider. Instead, the king had immediately decided to take in the woman.
“That ball of light was unnatural,” Thranduil told his son in an undertone as he watched the guards slowly move the woman as to not aggravate her wound. “It was able to appear suddenly in our forest, and it was able to transport this woman here. Where might it appear next, and who might it transport next? What if it brings enemies right into our kingdom—right into the palace?”
Legolas paused for a moment. Then, understanding what his father was getting at, he said, “…It is a potential threat to our security.”
“Exactly,” Thranduil nodded once. “That is why the human must live. We must find out what she knows about that ball of light.”
Thranduil had immediately recognized the possible dangers that such an unnatural object might pose. And such threats must be dealt with as soon as possible, as efficiently as possible. And the most efficient way right now was to find out what this human knew.
The guards carried the woman over to the steeds. The only issue was that there were only two—the prince’s horse and the king’s elk. The guards had traveled on foot since they hadn’t been planning to go far from the palace, and this forest trail was narrow. Moreover, the trees were densely packed in this part of the forest, so if they had needed to go off the trail to follow spiders, being on horseback would have been a hindrance. But now, they had to bring a wounded human with them…
“Legolas, she must ride with you,” the king told his son as he was already moving toward his elk.
“Very well.”
Legolas had already been expecting that this would be the arrangement. Having the guards carry the human on foot would take too long; she would bleed out before they reached the palace. And there was no way that the king would ride along with a human on his personal steed.
So, the elven prince quickly mounted his horse, and the guards lifted the human up onto the horse as well, placing her in front of the prince. Legolas held on to her securely with one arm while his other hand controlled the horse’s reins.
“Legolas and I will ride ahead,” Thranduil told his captain of the guard. “Follow after us as quickly as you can.”
“Of course, Your Majesty,” Tauriel promptly replied, bowing her head.
And the king and the prince rode off, urging their steeds to go at their top speed. Riding so fast on horseback, of course, jostled the wounded human, and Legolas’ elf ears heard the faintest moans of pain from her. There was no other way, though; if they were to save her life, they had to be as fast as possible.
Thankfully, they soon reached the palace. The guards at the gates were quite surprised to see the king and the prince arrive with a human. A wounded human. But they all knew better than to the question it when they saw the stern expression on the king’s face.
Thranduil and Legolas both dismounted, Legolas carefully bringing the woman down with him.
As they entered the palace, Thranduil looked down at the unconscious, bleeding woman in his son’s arms. This strange being definitely had a lot to answer for. And Thranduil would be certain to get the answers out of her, whether she wanted to or not. Moving his gaze from the human, he met his son’s eyes.
“Get her to the healers now, Legolas. Tell them to do everything in their power to ensure that she lives. Inform me at once when she has regained consciousness… I will interrogate her myself.”