#(this would likely not have continued once they got him to ugarad and his drugoth party tho)

[aurore-parle-de-ses-idees]

85 (Struggle/Fighting Back) for anyone you deem fit!

(additional car bronach gundabad stuff! (sorry corunir you mostly got plinkod here to plinko est by extension))

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It had almost been an easy thing, shutting the door and leaving her there, with the stone and Olcrith’s body and a way out of the tower. If his chances of slipping back into the ranks of the Angmarim of Tûr Fúar unnoticed are slim, hers are worse, and one of them at least must escape. They came for information and information they found, but all of this serves no purpose at all if they are both taken captive.

“There! That’s the one!” Damn. The tower is large enough they had managed to avoid the guards who had escorted the last party from Barad Gúlaran- until now, at least.

He leads them on a great chase through the tower, down into the depths where cobwebs and crumbled stone give way to the bones of the older fortress on which Agal Dûn was built. He slips down human-sized stairs carved into far larger blocks of stone until the halls become winding tunnels that run down into the heart of the mountains. He is still pursued, and so he does not stop- not until he comes to a wide, high-roofed chamber with a shallow, ice-cold stream cutting through it. He hears the voices beyond it too late, and sees the Angmarim waiting there only when they round the great, pale green stone that rests in the center of the great chamber.

“Claghórd! Deal with him!” And- oh that was Ásachal, wasn’t it? What exactly has he wandered into here?

But he has little time to ponder it, with the Warlord before him and his pursuers behind. He draws a heavy dagger from beneath his stolen robes. It looks pitifully small beside the greataxe that swings for him.

---

The old rooms repurposed as cells in the higher levels of the tower are cold and empty, and he takes what solace he can from the fact that he’s alone. The cold gets into him too quickly without the heavy Angmarim robes; his shoulders and wrists ache with it, even without the chains they haven’t yet bothered with.

They are still fighting over what to do with him. He might laugh to find them proved so thoroughly fractured, but he is cold and getting colder, and they have shown no great desire to care for their prisoner.

Some must want him interrogated, he’s sure. He thinks that the obvious choice, but the High Priestess had wanted him killed out of hand, and the gardeners had spoken of promising experiments, and at least three other influential sorcerers had sent messengers to stake their own claims. He is not consulted, naturally.

He has had time to consider the great stone in the depths, and he does not care for the conclusions he draws.

It had not been unlike the Stone of Erech, massive and smooth and heavy with a sort of presence that is not easily described. He had believed it only the presence of the Dead, in Gondor, but Esterín had described it similarly even after their departure, and had said it was not unlike the stone locked in the ice-canyons of Forochel.

Small wonder that Ásachal was so dismissive of Olcrith’s experiments with the purple gem.

He is glad Esterín escaped- hopes she did, that she has taken the stolen stone and all that they learned and sent word to their friends and allies- but the presence of an intact Vandassar he dearly wishes she could have learned of first.

Servants of the fractious factions of the Iron Crown come to see him. They ask him the same questions. He gives them all different answers, and wonders if it will do any good at all if they are sharing so little with each other already. One brings down a staff with some glinting purple jewel that glares at him like an angry eye. Another brings a different staff, one that calls up visions of the dead behind her and only sits outside his prison and watches him until he squirms beneath the eyes of friends long gone and a slow, suffocating pressure that closes around his chest.

What that one wants he never does learn, left insensate in the freezing room until some other group of Iron Crown acolytes with pale silver threadwork on their purplish robes prod him awake, hissing at him to be silent or suffer their displeasure.

“It’s clear,” one of their number hisses down the chilled halls. “Hurry.”

He stumbles as they go, cold and numb and still half-lost in a world swimming with the faces of the dead- Lorniel and Areneth and Palandur and more, so many more. By the time he is pulled around a corner and wrestled into a too-large robe like that of the Angmarim around him he has mostly come back to himself, for all it still feels half a dream.

“Are we sure about this?” one of them asks nervously.

“Quiet,” another hisses. “Ugarad said we have some use for him at Bagud-dum.”

Not a single encouraging word in there, Corunir thinks with just a touch of wildness. He lets them drag him through the halls to yet another hidden door that lets them out into the cold wind of Câr Bronach, the stars bright above them and the Drearspire above lit by the haunting blue dead-lights. They keep to the shadows of the tower as long as they can before breaking for a tall spur of rock where they stop, panting, and watch the tower nervously, though no pursuit comes. Corunir sighs deeply.

“Quiet, you.” And because he is still off enough that the dead-lights of the fortress catch and hold his eye too long and light-headedness catches him when he turns too fast and the cold’s teeth are still lodged deep in his bones, he does as he is told. Maybe when we are further away, he thinks, and lets the nervous Angmarim lead him through the Sorrowglen.

It must be near dawn when they stop their halting flight near the pass to the Welkin-lofts, looking about with tired, anxious eyes. For a moment he has no hint as to what they have seen, wearier even than they, if more accustomed to it.

There is static in the air, a building charge that tastes of something familiar and greatly welcome. She should be well away from here, he thinks, and at the same time I am glad she’s not. The Angmarim draw into a tight clump, spells of their own on their lips, and he takes his chance.

There’s less strength than he would like in the blows he throws at his nearest captors, but their exhaustion and surprise makes up for it. Two of them stagger and it’s just enough of a window for him to shoulder them aside and run. Lightning blasts the ground behind him, scorching the ground black and throwing splinters of stone in all directions. A familiar figure steps, sparking, from behind a stone and he can only laugh in desperate relief.