Welcome to Gaia! ::

Sir Valdemar shook his head slowly, and for the first time he looked old, creases wrinkling his face and his eyes gaunt and filled with despair.

"In a manner of speaking," he said quietly. He flipped the pages in the book, careful that he was the one to do it and not the book so that the room would not be filled with the wind and noise as it had the first time.

"The creatures that you are about to see," he told Lin, "began as trolls ... rock trolls, as they became known, because of their choice of habitation ... but they, unlike the other races created by Melkor, began to show an intelligence that tended them towards the good instead of evil ..."

He found the page he was looking for and left the book still for a moment.

"Do you know of the druids?" he asked Lin, wanting to make sure she would understand what he was going to tell her.




The king smiled at Lore. "It's a shame Celebor can't bring his children here for us to meet all of them," he sighed, "but I suppose such is life. And truth be told, I'm not so sure I would want to go through a portal to another world either ..."

He chuckled softly. "As for Jair, I can well imagine the fun he must be having. I was terrified the first time I saw snow and ice ... I had no idea what they were. I can't say that I miss them at all. This area was forest when I was born, but it was still nearly as hot as the desert is now. I can handle the heat. Cold, not so much."

"Nothing, you had druids?"

She had heard of the term, once... from school, but she didn't know anything about the ones from Gaia, much less here. The ones from Gaia had something to do with magic, but that was about it.

Sir Valdemar had been about to read again, but at Lin's confession he stopped and looked at her.

"In the First Age," he said solemnly, "the races wished to protect themselves against the demons. It was clear that if everyone searched for their own protection, nothing would happen ... so a handful of people, a few from each race - the Light Elves, the Dark Elves, the Humans - who were a new race then - and even some of the creatures created by Melkor who seemed to have the intelligence near our own - please do not take the remark amiss, but they were rather stupid creatures, all of them - and yet who did not seem tainted by his evil ..."

He sighed. "They created an order of druids, magic researchers and users. Even I am unaware of the extent of what they learned, only that they were destroyed ... by some of their own."

And at this point he turned his attention back to the book and prepared himself to read once more.



Reave chuckled. "That does sound like fun," he couldn't help but admit. "The sliding part, I mean. I remember ... when I was a boy ... I would beg my father to take me to the mountains after a heavy rain, so that we could slide down the mud banks ..."

He shook his head slowly. "But that was a lifetime ago," he murmured. "Such things have long passed away. But come," he smiled suddenly, leading them towards a large door, "here is your room."

She hadn't been aware that even humans here could use magic, but in many ways this shouldn't have surprised her. After all wasn't Gaia the same way? Anyone could use magic, but some people were just born to naturally use it compared to other people.

Lin watched Sir Valdemar's actions.

Sir Valdemar began to read once more, and yet again the room around them vanished, to be replaced by another dark room. Seven men were seated around a long table, and it was clear that one space was vacant. All of them were dressed in long, black, hooded robes, much like the ones that Aragost always wore, and it seemed as though they were in the middle of a heated argument.

Suddenly a door that was behind Lin and Sir Valdemar crashed open and a burning heat filled the room. Only a fraction of it reached the two who were watching the scene, though the men in the illusion room screamed and burst into flames. A tall shadowy figure engulfed in fire entered the room from the door, roaring its supremacy and sending flames and bursts of magic all through the room. Books fell from the walls, rocks began to crumble from the ceiling, and in a single instant all of the world's most powerful magic users were dead.

The creature was tall, so tall that it nearly brushed against the ceiling, and as the flames grew around it some of its features came into focus. Thick, bark-like skin covered its body, and as it turned to leave the crumbling building once more a scrap of black cloth could be seen on its back - the last remains of a druidic robe.



Reave smiled widely and set the bag on a chair near the door.

"We'll arrange to have Luthien and Ruel's old cradle brought here," he informed them, "since they have no more need of it. Even Tinuviel ... as much as we would like her to make use of it, seems not to be interested in finding herself a husband quite yet."

He sighed, then winked at Elnara. "You know how those princesses are."

Lin decided that seeing people burn alive was the single most disturbing thing she had ever seen even if it wasn't real. It was uncomfortably warm, but then again it was like sitting close to a fireplace, in which she didn't want to know how hot it was for them. However in all of that, as she watched the creature turn to leave she forced herself to blink.

Twice.

"That thing was a person?"

"That 'thing'," Sir Valdemar replied quietly as the room returned to its normal state, "is the creature that has reappeared. The rock troll ... the morgawr. The destruction of the druidic order was only the beginning of his carnage ... only one, the Head Druid, Achaar, escaped, and only because he had been delayed and was late for that meeting. When he at last arrived and confronted the creature ..."

He trailed off. No one really knew what had happened ... for twenty five thousand years, the fortress had been gone from the world, and the druid with it ... yet now the fortress was back, and though the druid had returned as well, he had been killed before he could tell anyone what had happened.

"And now it has returned," he said quietly, "and will wreak the same havoc on our world as he tried to do back then. It is like the return of Melkor himself, though Melkor is dead."

He slammed the book shut before it could do anything on its own, then put one hand on Lin's shoulder. "Can you walk on your own?" he asked her worriedly.



Reave laughed at Elnara. He had known she would know what he meant.

"Well, I'll let the four of you get settled," he grinned, "and then meet you back downstairs. I'm rather anxious to see if Sir Valdemar has gone to see Atalya yet. You can find us there when you're ready."

He knelt down to ruffle Garrick's hair, then Hana's, and then he was gone.

Lin blinked, she had forgotten she was sitting on Sir Valdemar's lap, and noted how still child small she was compared to him (which shouldn't have surprised her). She pried her fingers away from his robes and slid off his lap. She stood, though she felt her legs were like jelly. She mentally scolded herself, there was more serious things than the fact she was having jelly legs at the moment.

"Well enough," Lin replied, she took a deep breath, "It feels like we've been in here forever, I hope we haven't, I was also supposed to get you to talk to Queen Atalya... but well..."

They got sidetracked.