The moment we laid eyes on Morgoth, Art3mis began to sing. Her voice echoed off the black chamber walls, and as she finished her song, all of the Orcs, Balrogs, and other fearsome creatures that stood guard in Morgoth’s court were lulled to sleep. A few terrifying seconds later, Morgoth himself tipped forward out of his throne, unconscious, and crashed face-first onto the bronze floor with a thundering clang that sounded like an avalanche of iron. His crown rolled off his head and came to rest on the floor directly in front of me, with three shining Silmarils set into the band of black iron.
When I glanced over at Morgoth’s face, all I saw was a whirling mass of formless darkness. It was utterly terrifying, so I averted my eyes. That was when I noticed that both his hands were covered in scar tissue, as if they had been badly burned, and that part of his massive right foot was missing, as if it had been hacked off in battle.
Art3mis motioned me forward, toward the crown, as she began to sing the same song spell again. She’d have to keep casting it continuously to keep everyone asleep.
I removed the Wolf-hame and transformed back into my human form. Then I drew Angrist and used it to pry one of the glowing Silmarils free of its setting in Morgoth’s iron crown. But when I took the glowing jewel in my hand, nothing happened. No burst of light, no flashback. No transformation into the Sixth Shard. It was still just a Silmaril.
The Silmaril was emanating a great deal of light, like a shining beacon, so I stored it in my inventory. Then I looked back at the crown. I was tempted to pry a second jewel loose from it. And a third, too, just for the hell of it. They were right there in front of me! But with great effort, I heeded Arty’s warning, hoping she was right. If this was indeed the jewel we needed, maybe it would transform into the shard once we’d escaped the confines of Angband.
Once she saw that I had obtained our prize, Art3mis stopped singing. Then we both donned our magical disguises once again and headed for the surface, following the same secret route by which we’d come in.
When we reached the top of the stairs and spied the great iron gates, we found our way blocked once again. The giant wolf Carcharoth had awoken from his slumber.
In this same moment, the Silmaril suddenly appeared in my right hand. I tried to store it back in my inventory, but found that I couldn’t. The jewel was stuck to the palm of my right hand. I couldn’t let go of it.
“If you try to get past Carcharoth, he’ll bite off your hand and swallow it along with the Silmaril,” Art3mis said. “Just like he did to Beren. And if that happens, the Silmaril will burn Carcharoth from the inside and drive him mad with pain, and he’ll go tearing across the countryside. We’ll have to chase him down, and that would cost us even more time. Time we no longer have to spare.”
“OK,” I said. “Then why don’t you just put him to sleep again?”
“I can’t,” she replied. “Lúthien was only able to enchant him once, on their way in.”
“Then how are we going to get past that thing?”
“With a little help from a friend,” Art3mis replied. “There’s only one creature who can put Carcharoth out of his misery….”
She removed a small glass figurine from her inventory. It looked like a large dog with shaggy white hair. I realized that it must be another Figurine of Wondrous Power, like the ones I possessed of Shadowfax and Felaróf. But I’d never seen one in the form of a dog before.
Art3mis set the figurine on the ground in front of us. Then she put two fingers in her mouth and let out a long, shrill whistle, before shouting, “Huan!”
The figurine began to grow and morph into an enormous Irish wolfhound with a coat of long white hair. He was the size of a small horse. The wolfhound bowed his head to Art3mis, then sniffed the air and turned around. When he spotted Carcharoth, he immediately bared his razor-sharp teeth.
Art3mis leaned over and whispered something in Sindarin to Huan, and he bounded forward and lunged at Carcharoth, snapping his mighty jaw closed around the wolf’s neck. The impact knocked Carcharoth aside, clearing our path to the exit.
Art3mis and I ran forward while the wolfhound distracted the wolf long enough for us to escape through the open gates.
As soon as I crossed the threshold and emerged from the dark fortress of Angband, the Silmaril in my right hand transformed into the Sixth Shard—and another flashback began.
For the first second or two, I couldn’t see anything. Then someone removed the blindfold I was wearing, and I found myself staring at the waterfalls of Rivendell, with a familiar-looking mansion nestled among them. Og was showing Kira the house he’d constructed for her for the very first time. The place where they would spend the rest of their lives together.
Kira turned a full circle, and I could feel her heart pounding as she took in her beautiful surroundings. Then she looked into her husband’s eyes and said, “Oh, Og—I never want to leave.”
Then it was over, and I found myself back on Arda, standing next to Art3mis outside the Gates of Angband, clutching the Sixth Shard in my right hand. I glanced down at it. There was an ornate, calligraphic letter L etched into its crystalline surface. I immediately recognized it as Leucosia’s character symbol—the one that had adorned her Dungeons & Dragons character sheet. I’d seen that same letter L in Kira’s notebook, in her illustration of the Shrine of Leucosia. Her character symbol was etched into the stone altar’s surface, and it matched the symbol etched into the Sixth Shard exactly.
I pinpointed the shrine’s location on Chthonia in my OASIS atlas, and attempted to teleport us both there. But I couldn’t. We weren’t in a designated departure zone.
Suddenly, thunder rumbled from the gray sky overhead, and bolts of red lightning began to arc upward from the ground around us as the earth itself began to shake. What sounded like a series of explosions boomed from above, and we both looked up to see fire and smoke erupting from the three volcanic peaks of Thangorodrim. A moment later, a hail of flaming rock and molten metal began to rain down on the landscape below.
“Angband is awakened!” Art3mis shouted, pulling me away from the gate. I could already hear all sorts of foul creatures screaming and roaring and growling as they made their way to the surface. Morgoth’s minions began to pour out of the secret gate behind us. And we could hear even more of them approaching the main gate directly ahead of us. We were trapped in the middle of two dark armies, both of which were rapidly closing in on us.
There didn’t appear to be any way for us to escape. When I turned to Art3mis for guidance, she pointed toward the sky.
A pair of giant eagles were descending toward us, with their claws out. But Art3mis didn’t move, so neither did I, and a split second later, the eagles scooped both of us up and spirited us away.
Once we were safe and soaring high above in the clouds, we climbed up onto their backs and Art3mis introduced me to our new friends. She was riding on Gwaihir and I was astride Landroval.
“These are the eagles who rescued Beren and Lúthien when they were fleeing Angband,” Art3mis said. Then she pointed toward the three volcanic peaks that still loomed behind us, spitting fire and lightning into the darkening sky. “The Great Eagles used to roost back there, on the peaks of Thangorodrim. But now their eyrie is in the Crissaegrim mountain range in southern Echoriath.”