Litharil moved slowly, her sword was drawn and held low.
Her shield was raised, as if to guard against the the endless dark.
Around her stretched the halls of Khazad-dûm. in the faint illumination, they appeared like the bones of some dead titan — broken pillars, shattered bridges, and debris caked in the dust of ages.
She had entered the this forgotten Hall hours ago, following the rumour of an old relics lost during Balin’s doomed expedition. But Moria did not surrender its secrets easily.
The first warning came as silence.
No dripping water, nor rumbling stone. Even the ever present distant sounds of goblins vanished.
She stopped beside a cracked pillar, her eyes narrowing.
Then she saw the webs.
Thick strands hung between the columns ahead, glistening like silver ropes in the dark. Cocooned shapes swayed gently within them — some unmistakably Dwarven.
Litharil tightened her grip on her shield.
A hiss answered her movement.
They descended from all around almost soundlessly, their enormous forms barely separated from the gloom by the dim glow of her lantern.
Numerous eyes looked in her direction, as their owners skittered across the debris choked floor with disturbing grace and speed,
She flexed her sword wrist, and took a slow focusing breath in.
The first lunged
She slammed her shield into the creature’s head, the crack echoed through the chamber.
Her sword then flashed upwards carving an arc of dark ichor through the air.
The creature shrieked and collapsed twitching onto the cold stone floor.
But more came.
Three. Then six.
Her training took over. She moved with disciplined precision.
Spear-forms, trained into muscle memory millennia ago and now adapted to sword and shield turned her movements into a flowing dance of quick cuts and brutal shield strikes.
A soft, yet haunting song rose softly from her lips, an ancient battle chant to both calm herself and to find the pattern of movement in the chaos around her.
Still, the spiders pressed ever closer.
One dropped down from the ceiling, its bulk colliding with her hard enough to bring her to one knee, another then began wrapping strands of webbing around her shield, trying to disable her.
her heart quickened, for a brief moment, the dark of Moria seemed endless.
Then she felt the clarity of the moment, the knife-edge of life and death.
No longer was this a world that she felt withdrawn from, for this was her reason for denying the grey sails, her reason for remaining while everything she once knew had turned to forgotten ruins.
The Great Enemy still existed, and it's servants still needed to be brought low.
With a cry of exultation, she drove her sword into the ground itself.
Light burst outward from the blade in a radiant shock-wave, casting the chamber in hues of blue and silver.
The spiders recoiled violently, shrieking as the ancient light scorched their eyes.
Litharil tore free of the webbing and surged forward, slipping her javelin from her back into her free hand as she moved.
With her shield she crushed one spider against a pillar, not stopping the press until she felt the resistance of stone.
Another she pierced clean through its skull with her javelin as it fatally hesitated, caught between whether to attack or flee. It's ichor and brain matter spilling out across the floor.
The remaining creatures fled upward back into the darkness, hissing curses in their foul language as they vanished among the endless shadows of the ceiling.
Silence once more returned.
Breathing heavily, Litharil stood alone amid torn webs and the freshly slain foes.
She retrieved her sword and glanced into the dark tunnel ahead.
The relic still waited.
And so, without hesitation, she continued deeper into Moria.
