The land of Middle Earth is an ancient place, especially to those who remember the creation. Unlike Earth, the sun and moon appear to indeed revolve around it, the mystic energies are strong and indeed, stifling. Only the most powerful can cast even the most simple of spells, however, some know how to bend these energies into non-physical illusions and indeed, wield the energies as weapons, taming them to their will.

Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore and Ceridwin Potter

The shriek of a whetstone applying a fresh edge to a sword with a near rhythmic pattern of strokes came from a corner of the outer courtyard of the fortress of Helm's Deep. Many battles had been the last stand of Rohan, here, against enemies old and new, and it was now time for another. The wraith-like shadow in this corner of the fortress cast a foreboding aura, and few approached, which the figure was happy with. His thoughts were on the battle ahead and the battle just passed, where he'd rallied the cavalry for a massed counter-charge against Saruman's scouts.

Named in whispered conversations as the Black Mage, he cut a tall figure, hooded and swathed in a robe of fine dark elven silk over plates of smoky steel and black dragon's hide. He rested now, for all that could be done to prepare for battle had been done, and much of it with magic. Appearing from shadow and darkness without warning, the dull thunder of magic as he drove the butt of his black staff against the rock.

First a trench opened around the base of the wall, and then it was flooded as he damned the Deeping Stream. The mud and clay he left on either side of the gate, ready to reinforce it against rams, then with another drum-beat of magic, the rocks torn from the earth crashed into the sunken culvert and dammed the stream beneath the great wall of the Hornburg, rendering one weakness null. The flooded trench had to be approached through massed ranks of sharpened wooden stakes, conjured with these mystical powers, doing all to delay the fall of Helm's Deep.

Then the workers in the fortress brought bundles of thousands of arrows to him. Spells beyond the comprehension of man were cast, laying enchantments on wood and steel. No shaft loosed from the Hornburg would shatter on enemy plate, and no fire-hardened ensorcelled arrowhead would fail to drive through the thickest armour. The forge masters worked on hundreds of blades, reforging them in a magical fire which burned a terrible, ghastly green. This fell cursed fire burned hotter than any of human make and allowed swords to be reforged, refined, sharpened and tempered with greater speed. Cheap axes were made given the need to keep back as much metal as possible, while wood was easily worked and near-unlimited.

With the sorcerer's assistance and direction, carpenters reinforced the gates of the great fortress. Dozens of men, women and children were drilled through the use of swords, axes and spears to defend the last fortress to the last. Women would be held in reserve, but they too were willing to give their lives so others could escape deep into the mountains, as willing as every man who had sworn to lay down his life so as to stall Sauron's thrall Saruman.

Every hour, on the hour, the throb of a true drum made from the skin of a shark and the wood of a most ancient tree echoed across Helm's Deep, the defenders looking up to the sun to see the time, wondering if their last hours approached. Would they live? If they did, how many of their fellows would be dead?

And then, the horn blew.

"What do you mean Albus!" screeched a Scottish voice; "That he's been missing for more years than anyone has known, but you've known about it for four, and nobody has been told!"

"Minerva, imagine the chaos when they realise the boy-who-lived vanished." explained a grandfatherly voice; "But I've been searching for him since he failed to appear for his first year-"

A green fire burst into life in the fireplace of the circular office.

"Dumbledore." stated a hooded man in the flames; "We've found a trace of inter-dimensional magic about a mile from the Dursley residence."

"Can you track it?" asked the eldest man.

"Not exactly... But imagine a length of string, we don't know where it goes. But we can attach a ring to it and slide the ring down the string... and send someone with that ring..." stated the hooded man.

"You mean we could go after him?" stated the broad Scottish-accented woman.

"Exactly." the man in the fire agreed.

"What are you waiting for Albus?" she barked.

"Wait Madam McGonagall, such a trip requires preparation. This dimension is theorised to be one of many where any possibility is real, thus creating an infinity of them. Thus we cannot say what the alternate will be like, for instance, it could be a near replica of this world where somebody in 1490 failed to go to the loo. Or it could be utterly different, no magic, different language, no currency, different currency..." warned the hooded man.

"No matter, translation spells, a bit of bullion, shouldn't be too much of a problem." said the eldest man dismissively; "How long until you can put your... trace... on the travel?"

"A day Dumbledore, a day." said the man in the fire; "But remember, time may not follow the same speed as it does here... so between when Scion Potter left and now may have been a hundred years... or more. For all we know, the world might be a far different place to one he saw, or completely gone. This could be a one-way trip for you into a total vacuum."

Sat under the shadows of a tree, the faint rasp of a whetting stone halted as the eerie tones of an elven horn rang out, followed by several more in succession. Standing up, the figure swiftly moved through the shadows, often completely vanishing into them before re-emerging in the lee of the gatehouse, sheathing an eket, a shortsword of Numenorian craft.

The gates were flung open as a woman, mounted on a coal-black charger led a host of elven archers, six wide and hundreds deep across the chasm below the fortress. The horsewoman was the epitome of a deadly beauty, death made female. Midnight black hair tied back in a ponytail descending into the long midnight black fur-lined cloak flung over her shoulders, eyes which glowed a fiery gold in sharp, pale features. A mixture of chainmail and the hide of a great serpentine creature making up her armour and the elegant filigree of the scabbards in which sheathed blades rested, slung at her side. A cuirasse of gleaming elvish metal, with a sunburst of gold in the centre.

Dismounting with a light clink as her chainmail shook, she moved with a grace reserved for only the greatest fencers and most elegant dancers, alongside a silver-haired male elf.

A tired, haggard looking Aragorn burst out with two others behind Theoden, the King of Rohan.

"I bring word from Elrond of Rivendell." the elf stated; "Long ago, an alliance existed between men and elves. We fought and died together on the fields of Mordor. We have come to honour that allegiance."

Aragorn bowed momentarily with a fist clasped over his heart before clasping the elf in a hug.

Seeing the mage lounging in the shadows, the woman strode over and pulled him out, sliding back the hood to show an ageless face, twinkling green eyes and untameable black hair. She immediately pulled him into a heated kiss, his arms encircling her, one hand running through her mane, one resting about her body.

"You came." he whispered into her hair as he clasped the woman to his chest.

"I always will Harry." she replied; "Haldir was bringing his host of five-hundred, I rode everywhere I could, I've roused six-hundred elfin archers with an allegiance to us, mostly Silvan elves who roam the lands, and four hundred elfin swordsmen also of the Silvan clan, eight-hundred soldiers from the borders of Gondor and Rohan, one-hundred shield-maidens of Rohan, fifty of the best dwarven engineers of any peoples. They see what is coming, that it may be the End of All, and they fight with us."

"And my own host, three-hundred light infantry. Small as it may stand, fiercely it fights." the mage smirked; "Well done Ceredwin, Saruman and his accursed master have a lesson to learn. Free will cannot, and never will be suppressed by force of arms!"

"Free people need never kneel unless they decide of their own free will to." Ceridwin nodded; "Come, let us find if within these walls a good meal can be had."

In a short time they found themselves seated with the remainder of the so-called 'Fellowship' at a long table in the great hall of the castle, one hewn into the very rock of the White Mountains. With them were Theoden of Rohan and his daughter, as well as the Rohirric general Gamling.

"You were lucky that we were cutting across the northern territories when we came across the Warg Pack or far more would have reached your column." commented Ceridwin between bites of a chicken leg.

With those who could not fight being evacuated to Helm's Deep earlier that day, they were beset by dozens of Wargs and the orcish riders. Harry could only imagine the bloodshed if the fierce monsters and their riders had come in sufficient force, and at the time had wondered why they had not. Now he knew. The smaller number had been held off until he could form up Rohan's famous cavalry, delivering a shattering charge and routing the scouts.

"Indeed. Though I still worry. We are inside this fortress, yet we are also backed into a corner with little or no escape." Aragorn sighed; "People look to me to lead, yet what can I give them? Empty promises of life in the future when I do not know if they will survive the coming conflict."

"Hope?" asked Legolas; "We are not armies in ourselves, however skilled with arms we are. However, the people of Rohan have suffered under the constant abuse of Sauron, now they have a king who is renewed from his fever, and the heir to Gondor is amongst them. They draw hope from that, they draw hope from those of us who are willing to live and die in the cause of freedom."

"Laddie, ever heard the term 'cornered animal'. The accursed wretches of Mordor and Isengard have driven us into a corner. Now let them reap the whirlwind of their hubris." growled Gimli, bashing a hand on the table causing the platters of food to jump inches off the wood; "Now where's the beer, there's a good fight coming and I feel that's a good reason to celebrate!"

"I would advise against that, Master Dwarf, you have proven incapable of holding your drink." Legolas taunted as all about roared with laughter; "But we'll celebrate the victory with a cask of beer."

"Yet still, I will question myself. I am told I am king, yet can I be the ruler and leader?" Aragorn commented quietly.

"It is the moment that you stop questioning yourself that you ought to become worried." Eowyn, Theoden's niece immediately countered.

"That is true. To rule you must question your actions for they ultimately can have a far larger impact than a simple man's actions." Theoden nodded. "And when the darkness beckons... do not go so easily as I did. If you are to suffer, you are but one man, but if you allow the kingdom to suffer..."

"A king is not born." Harry said, his voice ringing off the stones; "Someone with the potential to rule is born, and I would say that all around this table have that potential. It is what we do with that potential. Forged in the fires of combat, melded in the depths of scholarship, that is what makes a ruler. Our wisdom, our cunning, our fierceness in the face of adversity."

"Indeed, then I shall do all in my power to work towards being the ruler that I am proclaimed to be." Aragorn nodded, standing up from the bench; "Sorcerer, I would beg you assistance, the caves. They are many and winding, I believe that with what we have here we can paint false entrances and cover the tunnels where the womenfolk and the children hide."

"Lead on, I will see what we can do." Harry grinned.

"Eowyn, go with them." ordered Theoden.

"And am I too doomed to cower in those caves, not allowed to defend my homeland and people with a sword in my hand?" she demanded, standing up sharply; "That I alone of the women who bear blades am forced away from the wall?"

There were few women who bore swords atop the wall. Herself and Ceridwin being the most notable amongst a hundred shield maidens.

"There is no glory in war. There is pain, loss, suffering and bloodshed." said Ceridwin with a flat, emotionless gaze; "Would I be able to, I would stand aside and live in the bliss of ignorance. Were I not what I am. Cherish what peace you can. While your liege lord defends the wall, you are the leader of those who are to remain in the caves. If it comes to it, you may have your chance to use your sword in anger. And I know that you have suffered under the curse of Saruman and want vengeance, but hold it in until we find the accursed wizard."

Eowyn's mind was awash with battling thoughts. Loyalty to king and kin begged her both to stand her ground to defend them, and to give in and allow them to hustle her off to the Glittering Caves. Then there was the advice of the woman who sat next to the Black Sorcerer, and given the layers of armour she wore along with an elvish scimitar, was undoubtedly a warrior.

"Truly, take what arms can be spared, and should Saruman be able to breach this fortress with his sorcery, be prepared to defend your people. Do not do this grudgingly, for the dark forces seek to split all from ancient alliances to familial love. To divide us and destroy us." Ceridwin continued; "Protect your people with your life."

The fourth day of the third month in the three-thousandth and nineteenth year of the Third Age

A day passed as labourers continued to slave over the defences of the ancient fortress, doing all they could to make victory a certainty, but only so much was complete as night fell. Harry, stood on the ramparts, finishing assembling a ballista, looked up as the ground shook, the thundering roar of the charging horde of Saruman came down the valley, torches spotted amongst a huge force of abominations, monsters created by a fallen wizard.

"TO ARMS ROHAN, TO ARMS ELVES. GIVE THEM ALL THE MERCY THEY WOULD GIVE YOU! THIS IS WHERE THEY DIE!" Harry thundered from his perch on the Deeping Wall; "NEAR A HUNDRED YEARS HAD SAURON HELD THIS LAND IN HIS CLUTCHES. A HUNDRED YEARS HIS MANIPULATIONS AND FOUL MINIONS HAD US LIVING IN FEAR! NO MORE! HERE, THEY FALL LIKE WATER UPON A ROCK!"

Aragorn nodded gratefully at the hooded mage as every man stood up straighter, every shield feeling lighter. Battle was upon them.

Holding up his fist, Harry slowly drew it downward. He called on the mystic energy of Arda, shaping it into a coiling, writhing storm, and then loosed his fist. The magic in the air burst, violently, sending down a tide of water and dozens of bolts of lightning which fell from the storm-ripped sky into the horde. Beside him, Ceridwin drew up her staff, a piece of art made from the gleaming gold of Laurelin, one of two trees of Valinor, bound in blood to her.

She slammed it down on the rampart, channelling magic into the earth itself. Viciously sharp rocks burst from the ground in a low wall pointed into the charging Uruk-hai.

"WE HOLD TO DAWN!" she yelled into the wind; "AT DAWN, ROHAN RETURNS AND WITH IT, THE ROHIRRIM! LET NO ORC OR URUK-HAI FEEL MERCY!"

A jet black staff materialised in Harry's hand, a trail of eerie green flames trailing behind the top as he lifted it in the air. Dozens of catapults, ballistae and other siege weaponry came into action, their crews responding to the signal. Powerful plated hands glinted, clasped around the jet black wood as huge quarrels, rocks and ceramic pots of boiling oil were launched across the wall and onward, into the valley, the pots of oil set fire to before launching.

The charging Uruks had piled up against the jagged rocks, impaling and crushing those in front, and then the missiles hurtled into the back of the force, setting blazing fires, crushing Uruk-hai with rocks and impaling them with quarrels. They clustered forwards, killing more of their number with the force of their pushing, crushing other Uruks indiscriminately in their bid to escape the oily flames, only exacerbated by the rain which began to rattle down onto the stones and the metal of their armour.

Placing his staff against the wall, he pulled apart his black robe and clipped it behind his back as a cloak, revealing a powerful frame clad in a layer of serpentine leather armour, a coat chainmail with a plate cuirass, vambraces, rerebraces, boots of the that same serpentine hide covered by plated greaves.

The armour continued to glint in the light of hundreds of projectiles, some burning fiercely as they shot through the sky. He didn't really need the armour, but seeing a leader to believe in, clad in fearsome armour was one of the greatest things an army could have. Picking up a powerful warbow and selecting a yard-long shaft with a bodkin point, he chuckled lightly at the camaraderie between Legolas and Gimli as the latter struggled to see the massacre below, Harry surveyed the run up to the wall as the horde approached a brightly painted pole stuck into the earth. Raising his warbow and bringing back the arrow, he yelled;

"Three hundred paces, half-draw!"

Five seconds later;

"Full draw!"

Grinning in a shark-like fashion, he awaited them to approach the marker.

"RELEASE!"

Hundreds upon hundreds of arrows rained down into the horde as they continued to advance, still hampered by a continuous bombardment by various siege engines behind the walls. Every man, woman and child who could draw a bow had come out to volley arrows on the attackers.

"And yet they fall like water upon the rocks!" Aragorn yelled triumphantly, seeing as Ceridwin raised a great magical shield with her gauntleted hands facing, palms out toward the oncoming force. Rain washed off it, falling to below the wall where the earth was churned and soaked, making it difficult for the Uruk-hai to advance.

Harry was using his staff to propel the water toward the horde, blasting them with it and churning up the mud. More than once, braces of lightning bolts fell into the water-logged soil and fried anything touching it.

"Draw... RELEASE!" he yelled once more.

The hiss of arrows through the air was followed by the sickening noise of shafts passing through armour and embedding deep in the flesh of their targets. Bodies began to pile up until the Uruk charge was broken. They slowly forged their way forward to the first obstacle, the jagged rocks that Ceridwin had conjured. Showing remarkable presence of mind, they stacked their fallen comrades against the rocky wall. Harry identified the leading Uruk-hai who stood proudly atop the rocks as the army poured over them.

With an eye on the flag fluttering in the wind, Harry chose a fresh shaft, drawing back the bow with all the strength in his torso, bending the bow and putting all the tension into the wood and the string. Elevating with care, he then released. With a woosh, the arrow flew past the bow, arcing down. Then with a brief flash and a spurt of blood, it slammed through the neck of the Uruk commander, sending him toppling down the back of the rocky bank.

However, by now the severely thinned ranks of the Uruk-hai were pressing at the wooden stakes, and despite the hail of arrows from the wall and from behind the rocks, they were bringing up ladders. The archers were now ducking as Uruks took aim at the crenellations with crossbows and shortbows. With the withering hail of arrows now being concentrated on trying to saturate each Uruk bowman, they began to make more progress. Dead Uruks were rolled into the moat until several bridges had been made across the watery trench, and even the wooden stakes had been added.

As the first ladder landed in front of him, Harry was atop the battlement, a terrible upstroke from his war hammer shattering the face of the first Uruk in front of him. Then with a thrust of his empty hand, the ladder was thrown backwards, away from the wall. Dashing along the wall top, he caught another ladder landing, smashing his hammer down on another skull before drawing and plunging his eket into the throat of another Uruk before throwing the ladder back.

He looked across to see Ceridwin dancing atop the battlements, her curved sword spraying blood in every direction as any Uruk with the misfortune or idiocy to come within her reach ended up resembling a deer after an encounter with a pack of wolves. She cut the legs from under one, then turned and delivered and stroke right across the throat of a second, when the first, seemingly unheeding of pain, rose, roaring defiance as it made to kill her.

A flash of terror, a flash of anger, a flash of steel. The dead Uruk took a few moments to contemplate the spike of the reverse side of the warhammer embedded in its spine, before falling the great many feet from the crenellations to the mud below with a mournful howl.

"Do you want to delay them a bit more?" called Ceridwin.

"You thinking what I'm thinking?" asked Harry.

"Big angry and smoky?" she replied.

"To hell with it! This land will be hell if we do not go with it." Harry grunted.

The two flipped up their hoods and drifted, wraith-like, into the shadows, emerging below the wall, staffs and armour being the only parts visible of them in the dark, dull night.

Ceridwin's visage, beneath the hood of her cloak, became a terrible sight, features sharpening more, her hair slipping down her back, eyes flashing an even darker orange and red, flames licking around her irises and power radiating around her like a blanket of darkness. Below her normal image were several visages, all terrible to behold. She fell on the enemy, enraged at such abominations being allowed to so much as exist.

They both landed on the battlefield in front of the wall, trampling across bodies to cross the trench. With a terrifying laugh, she threw herself into battle. Flames flickered at the corners of her vision, drums of war beating in her ears, and then battle was upon them with terrible violence.

Thrusting the staff forward like a spear, it stopped short of a group of five Uruks, but then she drew it back sharply, reeling them in as if lassoed, but ducking out of the way so that they were propelled at high speed into the Hornburg. One staggered up, just in time for Harry to swing around, a vicious morningstar flail gripped in his right hand while he gestured with the staff in his left.

The two-hundred kilo Uruk was dragged off its clawed feet and drawn forward, furiously clawing at its throat, choking as Harry melded the magic around that bit of air and constricted it. He then swung the flail around from the right into the head of the monster, dispatching it with a single blow.

Then another group of Uruks chanced their luck and charged. One was foolish enough to be caught in a shadow cast by the moon behind the Horn of Helm Hammerhand. The shadows leapt forward and dragged the beast in, vanishing for a few moments before the dismembered corpse was thrown back out. Ceridwin grinned savagely. For a being of true light to have such control over darkness was... strange and exhilarating.

Harry's staff had vanished from his left hand as a group rushed him, and the chain of the flail was wound through his belt. He grabbed an Uruk by the throat, the sharpened edges of his plate gauntlet's plates cutting into the foul flesh. Reinforcing his arm by pushing magic into it, he shook the Uruk-hai like a rag-doll, and it suddenly went limp in his grip, its neck broken. He pitched the corpse at the group of them which were growling uselessly.

With them bowled over he rushed forward, his cloak billowing like some dark phantom. A flash of silver steel and a bastard sword was in one hand. The long elven blade was strange in that there was no curve, the steel did not shine with the usual lustre, it had experienced evil, fought it so many times, had a master die with the blade in his hand. Harry liked to believe that Fingolfin would be glad to see Ringil still being borne against the darkness.

Testing the familiar weight of the sword, Harry spun it around and drove it deep into the chest of one of the four living Uruk-hai. One of them was struggling to its feet as he held the grip in two hands and swung it around. Elven steel flashed and black blood spurted as the head of the Uruk thumped to the ground. He turned to see two of the Uruk-hai charging. The first met a sudden and violent end as Harry drove the sword to its hilt in the monster's chest. But then as he was drawing it out to cut the second down, his grip slipped. Managing not to drop the sword, but now clutching it by the blade, he swung it around, delivering a terrible stroke, a murder-stroke with the crossguard of Ringil, driving it into the throat of the Uruk.

Harry was just about to finish off the the remaining two when Ceridwin advanced forward, a one-handed bearded axe clutched in one clawed gauntlet and a heater shield on her other arm. The first remaining Uruk raised its cleaver-like sword and brought it down in a blow meant to cut her in half. A bell-like nose rang out as she raised the shield to take the blow, falling to her right knee as her right boot slid in the mud under the force of the blow.

That didn't stop her tensing her right leg and using it to launch herself forward, bulling over the monstrous Uruk with her rather insignificant body-weight and following it with a skull-splitting axe-blow. The second was already racing at her, swinging downwards with its cleaver. She simply slid to the left to avoid the chop and belted the animal over its head with her shield, momentarily stunning it long enough to embed the axe in its spine with a sickening crash and thunk as the axe first crashed through its crude armour and then sank into the flesh of the Uruk.

With a fifty-foot circle around them cleared by the herself and leaving torn bodies in the sodden earth, they prepared for the ritual. First, their axes, swords, shields and other weapons vanished in smoke and then, the rods of their staffs grew out of their gauntlets until they were both clutching them.

Stood opposite her, Harry began to chant in a dirge-like tone, the two circling the same spot some twenty feet apart as they drew a circle in the mud with the butts of their staffs.

"Release and bind to me!" they thundered in the Olde Tongue, Valarin, as flames burst around the circle.

A demon, smaller yet far more physically powerful than a Balrog burst from the earth, compact, fierce and truly angered as it was immediately caught by a cone of concentric spheres of near-invisible magic emanating from the two staffs and their wielders. It was leaner, smaller and more terrible than a Balrog, a huge flanged mace clutched in one clawed hand as it snorted smoke from its bull-like nostrils.

Much like a Minotaur, yet a far fiercer creature.

On the wall, Legolas's eyes widened as he took in events below, elven eyes scanning the battlefield.

"Aragorn!" he called to the man who was racing over from one of the captains, black blood coating his greatsword.

"By the Valar." gasped the man as he watched the sorcerer and the sorceress calmly walk the demon into the ranks of Saruman's army.

"We ought to give them some protection, aim beyond the demon." stated the elf.

"Two-fifty paces; DRAW!" called Aragorn; "RELEASE!"

Several more volleys followed, ripping holes in the horde's ranks as they saw with satisfaction, that before numbers overwhelmed and destroyed it, the demon ripped apart the commander, a gigantic Uruk-hai who had tried to use brute strength to dispatch the demon, to find itself torn limb from limb by the claws of a far more dangerous kind of monster.

Below, Harry glanced at Ceridwin;

"Get the elfin archers to behind the wall, let infantry take their place!" he ordered; "Go!"

She nodded and vanished silently. Harry turned to face the horde, a mail coif and a great helmet materialising under his hood. He was the only one of his dimension to have visited Middle Earth... but he'd arrived around seven thousand years before the Battle of the Hornburg, at The Beginning. Years untold, from when the Music shaped Middle Earth to this day in the Third Age of the Years of the Sun, he had to shape his magic, no petty fallen deity and a lesser deity, also fallen, even with his own monstrous army was getting to take over Middle Earth.

Stepping forward, Harry's eyes glowed an unnatural green as he strode forward, staff in his right hand, point down as it began to shimmer with power, an eerie green building at the end. Crossing the devastation wrought by arrows, magic and a demon, the first Uruk-hai to approach him fell as the staff touched it.

The first dead by his hand, lying by his feet, the sorcerer stood completely still as the Uruk-hai roared, beat their chests and tried to intimidate him. A heater shield materialised on his left arm as the staff elongated into a leaf-bladed spear. It still glowed an eerie green.

The first blade to descend upon him met thin air as he slipped behind the abomination and struck it dead with a blow into the neck with the leaf-bladed spear. Turning through a hundred-and-eighty degrees, he bashed aside a sword with his shield and riposted with a fatal lunge. The curved edge of the shield momentarily sharpened before he slashed it across the neck of another Uruk-hai, being brutally ripped out and embedded in the arm of another attacking monster.

Tearing the shield out, he kicked the creature's legs out from under it and stabbed the spear through its back. He may have long left Earth, but there were many things he remembered. History had taught him of some of the great warrior peoples. The Spartans he respected in particular, a long-gone nation of fierce warriors. Fighting with a spear, shield and a sword, emphasising strength and manoeuvrability in battle.

The spear momentarily returned to staff form in Harry's hand, and he thrust it in the direction of a charging Uruk-hai while it was still many feet away. A blast of pure magic ripped it limb from limb moments before the sorcerer spun around, a sickly yellow scythe of magic leaving the end. It lashed deep into half-a-dozen Uruk-hai and sent them to the earth, a deep furrow carved into their torsos.

Such was the curse that he formed on the tip spear that a single graze left three Uruk-hai shuddering on the ground, frothing at the mouth before thrashing into death's embrace. Smirking, Harry twisted and lowered his body so an attacker made contact with the shield, and carried by its momentum and the shield, was simply flung over his shoulder, receiving a thrust into the left-hand side of its torso from Harry's spear.

Returning the spear to the form of a jet-black staff Harry vanished it along with the shield. Harry whipped the bastard sword, Ringil, from its sheath on his left hip, immediately biting deeply into the stomach of an attacker. Pulling it loose, he callously kicked the beast aside and continued walking forward.

The neatly arrayed cohort of Uruk-hai was beginning to splinter. While it wouldn't slow the other cohorts, it would slow this one down, and in the long-run, help significantly. Blade resting on his left shoulder, Harry's paces sped up slightly as he met the next monster.

The blade of Ringil glinted in the moonlight as it came up and descended in a two-handed grip to hack deep into the creature's contaminated flesh, cutting diagonally down from its left shoulder, deep into its chest. The animal roared in agony as both the ice-cold Elvish steel and the torn shards of its own armour were driven into the cut before collapsing as Ringil was ripped back out of, drawing back so as to further open the wound.

Five Uruk-hai attacked him, simply rushing towards him, no attempt at any tactics. The first two he simply stepped aside and let them run into each-other with a resounding clang! before hacking their heads from their shoulders with a brutal swing before they could fall apart. He rammed the Elvish battle blade straight through the ineffective Uruk armour, into the stomach of the third, using a two-handed lunge at waist-level which pushed his body-weight behind the sword. Harry swiftly withdrew the sword and, bringing his back leg up, twirled it in a circular slash which sent yet another monster screaming to the churned-up mud and to death. The fifth ran past him as he dodged, collapsing as the blade bit into the back of its knees.

Harry had barely dropped that one when nearly a dozen more ran at him. Blocking a sword with Ringil for the first time, the ring of steel against steel heralding death like a funeral bell, he whipped a dagger out of his belt and thrust it deeply into the stomach of the closest one before embedding it in the forehead of a second with a powerful throw. Tripping the third over with an outstretched leg, he impaled it through the back into the mud with the sword.

"Something high – zero to me. Nice score." he muttered with a smirk as he summoned the dagger into his hand, wiped it clean and sheathed it.

With them running at him from every angle, he vanished in a puff of smoke and reappeared behind the largest group attacking him and, clasping a gauntleted hand around the mouth of the rearmost right marker of the group and drove a dagger into its neck, twisting the blade around several times, opening the wound further for good measure.

Very effectively blending into the darkness, Harry slunk back, reaching into his belt for the handle of the morningstar. Having freed it from his belt, he swung it a couple of times before delivering a crushing blow to the head of one of the Uruk-hai. With a momentary thought, his staff appeared in his left hand and immediately turned into the leaf-bladed spear. He hacked into them from behind, then murmured an incantation. The resulting blast threw aside the Uruks like sand in the wind. The remainder saw him, turned toward him and reacted. By charging.

Twirling it elegantly, he bludgeoned two Uruk-hai with the viciously-spiked ball on the end of the flail before piercing a third with the spear form of the staff. His eyes flashed with fire for a moment, then the air around the heads of a group of Uruk-hair suddenly stilled. They looked around confusedly before beginning to howl as Harry, grinning savagely, slowly compressed the air until the skulls of the five monsters suddenly burst like overripe fruit. An Uruk rushed him just in time for an underhand swing of the flail, which crushed the armour and embedded itself in the animal's crotch. He booted over the Uruk and delivered a thrust of the spear through the nape of its neck.

He was a sorcerer, a warlock – a warrior of magic. Spotting Ceridwin appear for a moment in a patch of moonlight, crossbow levelled at the head of an Uruk, he flexed his magic, preparing to wield it as a weapon of war.

As he concentrated on maintaining a magical awareness of the area around him, he felt a further group trying to sneak up on him as best they could. Lightning burst from his hands and left the six shuddering, smoking and dead on the earth. Within a minute, the entire cohort of a hundred monsters lay dead, crushed, slashed, stabbed, poisoned or fried on the ground which ran black with Uruk-hai blood, just two dark figures stood on that terrible field like demonds swathed in black.

Turning to look at the fortress, he saw the horde beginning to put up ladders once more. Harry closed his eyes and raised his hands, suddenly empty of weapons. His lips moved soundlessly under his hood, his green eyes suddenly turning the same burning, fiery gold as Ceridwin's. Harnessing the blood and life-energy of every slain Uruk, he had summoned cursed fire, forming the spirits of hell-beasts, provoked to destroy all they could. Once upon a time he had had difficulty controlling this.

Now, he was a fearsome sight, rampaging creatures of fire lashing out, consuming anything they could. He strode forward, toward the fortress, leaning on the spear with which he'd impale any unfortunate stragglers of the horde. Soon, his flames began consuming the attacking force who turned to face him. Moments later a hail of arrows, which could have blotted out the sky with their volume had there been a sun, lifted from behind the wall and fell on the attackers, leaving them writhing in the dirt, steel and ash wood embedded in their doomed bodies.

He was gathering pace, towards the ladders. A thought turned the spear back into the staff, and then into a vicious halberd. He swung it in both hands, beheading an Uruk who had the bad judgement to come within ten feet of him. A second howled and rushed him. With a mighty push, he drove the spearhead of the halberd as deep as it would go into the Uruk's chest, and hoisted it up on the halberd, still writhing. A jab of the weapon into the air hurled the beast towards its fellows, bowling them over.

That was when he saw a group of Uruk-hai dragging barrels of gunpowder toward the recently-filled gap where the Deeping Stream had run. The magic in the air condensed into the form of another spear, as he had no wish to lose his staff, which regained its form from the halberd and vanished.

Harry continued striding forward, gathering pace until he broke into a run. Drawing a small axe in his left hand as an Uruk left the group to confront him, Harry continued running forwards. The Uruk-hai was dealt with as he belted it in the jaw with the axe, severing the jaw save for the flesh of its cheeks and driving the bone into its brain. He didn't halt, the axe dissolving in black smoke. Then, within a short distance of the gunpowder-carrying Uruks, Harry hurled the spear overhand. It hurtled through the air and sank between the shoulders of a torch-bearing Uruk, who stared disbelievingly at the projectile sticking through its torso before slowly toppling forward. The blazing torch landed in a pot of gunpowder and set the entire lot off over fifty feet from the wall where it consumed the carriers in a huge fireball.

Sinking into the shadows, Harry emerged up on the wall, appearing between Aragorn and Ceridwin, ahead of the host of archers who were tightly packed, volleying arrows, dropping to their knees and allowing the next rank to fire a volley. Constant sustained fire coming from the fortress of four or five arrows a minute per archer were massacring the Uruk-hai. Ceridwin caught sight of a figure appearing and swung around, about to deal a vicious blow with a curved scimitar. Harry's quick drawing of Ringil just managed to block the slice, while his left went around her shoulders and dragged her in, against his chest. Their lips met in what was at first a fierce, one-sided kiss, before she realised who it was and pulled him in with her free hand, kissing back for a moment before pushing him away.

"We're a bit busy Harry, I sent the infantry back, there was only a brief incursion onto the wall." Ceridwin reported with a slight blush on her face as she tried to ignore how he'd stopped her attack which was intended to be swift and fatal; "They're down probably two-fifths of their force... and counting."

"Still a good few hours to go." Harry grinned, lowering his sword before ducking as she seemed to take another swing at him, only to hear the sound of steel cutting flesh and after turning around, seeing a beheaded Uruk slowly sinking to the rough stone of the rampart, the rain washing away the blood. "Love you."

"Love you too." Ceridwin smiled for a moment before turning serious, looking over the battlefield.

Harry sheathed the sword and picked up a longbow and a bundle of arrows that lay on the wall. Ceridwin dashed off to attack a group of Uruk-hai pouring over the wall from their ladder. He silently drew the string back and let it loose with a satisfying twang as a long barbed arrow pinned an Uruk through the nape of its neck.

For hours, the siege continued with the elfin archers and human bowmen continually picking off the Uruk-hai and dodging crossbow bolts from below. Several attempts to breach the wall with explosives were foiled- often with great casualties for the bearers of the volatile materials. Ceridwin and Harry held back the ladder assaults on the wall, along with Gimli, Legolas and Aragorn, cutting down the Uruks and hurling them back into their compatriots.

The trebuchets and mangonels were continuously hurling pots of oil over the wall, like fiery comets. They landed amongst the monsters with devastating results, coating the creatures in burning liquid which no amount of water would put out, but instead caused it to burn even more fiercely.

The sole attack by a ram on the gatehouse found the entire gate plastered by a several-foot thick wall of soil, and a barrage of rocks, pots of oil, arrows and burning brands blocked even more of the causeway. For hours, they repulsed attack after attack, repulsed by arrows, by sorcery and occasionally, good steel. Finally at dawn's first light, the host of Rohirrim arrived.

Cheers rang out, shields were clattered against with swords as the field was swept of the remainder of Saruman's ill-bred monstrosities.

"We did it." Ceridwin whispered into Harry's shoulder as he wrapped his arms around her.

"This battle." he warned quietly, not wanting to upset any of the cheering defenders.

Releasing her, he thumped Aragorn on the shoulder.

"We've won the battle - a counter attack is necessary. Sauron and Saruman won't take this well." Harry commented.

"He is right." stated Haldir, the elfin commander; "We crushed the invasion force with minimal combat, mainly siege weaponry, bows and magic. However, we now have cavalry, and enough horses in the fortress to equip a few more. Ten-thousand fall at the feet of a couple of thousand fighters."

A raven swooped out of the air, delivering a wax-coated wooden case, about the size of a cigar. Unscrewing the top, Harry withdrew a blood-stained scroll of parchment.

Harry read it briefly, handed it to Ceridwin and swept down the stairs to the courtyard behind the Deeping Wall. His staff materialising in his hand, a dull, drumbeat-like sound reverberated as he slammed it into the ground. In a matter of minutes, three-hundred tired-looking soldiers assembled before him.

For some reason that he wasn't quite sure of, Harry was immortal, he hadn't aged in many, many long years. In the last age, he had raised a personal army. Now they were assembled before him. Comfortable, light leather armour, metal cuirasses, greaves, Corinthian helmets, circular shields, spears, short swords and powerful shortbows. These men had willingly been trained to the point of destruction. They were hardened warriors, based on the Spartan warriors of his old lands.

"I once knew of a time and a place where three-hundred men stood up against hundreds of thousands, backed by a self-proclaimed god and slew tens of thousands before they were killed by arrows. Osgiliath is on the point of falling, they fight in the streets to hold back Sauron's army. You have eight hours to clean your arms and then we ride for Gondor to hold them off, they do not number hundreds of thousands, yet we will still slaughter them!" he declared.

They roared their approval. The Titans were tired, but eager to eke some little, or not so little, revenge on the dark forces which had terrorised the West for so long.

"And we will with you." stated an elegant voice from behind him.

Harry swivelled around to see Haldir, backed by several hundred of his archers, and not least, Ceridwin.

"Very well, clean your arms, ask Theoden for horses, we must not linger here long lest we sit while the world ends." he ordered.

"Good. Gimli, Legolas, we have our own cause to pursue in the next few days." Aragorn said with a grim smile; "I do not know if you stout enough of heart to go where I wish to tread. It will not be easy, and may yet cost us our lives."

"Not even a chance for a mug of beer and a good venison roast?" Gimli grumbled irritably; "And don't ask me about that bread of yourn elf."

Legolas shut his mouth quickly as the three quickly made towards the stables and their horses, to ride ahead to Dunharrow, where lay the mouth to the Paths of the Dead, atop a plateau with a winding causeway where Rohan could muster the Rohirrim in safety.

Yawning slightly, Ceridwin slipped out from under Harry's arm and stood up in the courtyard where they'd crashed out. She stretched, slightly cat-like in manner and quickly began to grab her bits of armour. An innate affinity with the sun and the stars meant she simply knew how long had passed since they had fallen asleep.

Over her padded leather jerkin and trousers, she pulled on a vest of dragon's hide bound together with rings of mithril chain, and boots of the same monster's hide. A knee-length hauberk followed that, and finally the bracers, rerebraces, cuirass and greaves. As she was just looping her swordbelt around her waist prior to pulling on her cloak, Ceridwin spotted the Rohirric King's niece, Eowyn daughter of Eomund watching her.

"Do not be afraid if you wish to speak." Ceridwin said mildly, pulling the clasp of her cloak across her shoulders.

Sitting down on an upturned barrel, she waited for the Rohirric maiden to gather her courage for a moment before speaking.

"Am I doomed to sit within the cold comforts of the fortresses of my people, never to participate in the struggle for our freedom from the oppression that comes from Saruman in the west and Sauron in the east?" asked Eowyn; "To live, caged to the whims of the menfolk of Rohan, to grow old unknowing of the battles our people give their lives in?"

"No. I do not think it is your fate. Your loneliness and despondency comes of what, to one of your age, was an age of serving under a loved one who did not so much as know your face. Yet through trials that would break a normal person, you perpetuated Rohan, your people against all the odds have lived to face Saruman and won." Ceridwin commented with a shake of her head; "I truly meant what I said about there being no glory in battle. It may seem glorious when recited to music in the years after, but oft, even time does not heal the emptiness of the heart when love is lost."

"It does not seem to be something you lack though..." Eowyn shrugged, glancing at the still-sleeping Harry.

"It was not always thus. Once we were bitter enemies." replied Ceridwin; "He loved an elvish woman, one of exceptional beauty, wisdom and valour, kin to the High King of the Ñoldor. Then Morgoth, the Black Enemy, a fallen Maia called Melkor, fell upon her people and she was destroyed. To this day I do not know how much they knew one-another, but when she died, for a while so did his soul. For hundreds of years, he rampaged across Arda, seeking to destroy Melkor so utterly that nought would remain of him except his consciousness, which he wished to torture with an eternity of nothingness."

"And you?" asked Eowyn, struck with horror.

"I... I sought to perpetuate Arda, to protect the lands. Yes I loathed Melkor, but Harry would not have cared if he had utterly destroyed Arda in his hunt." whispered Ceridwin, struck by the memories; "Such wrath he bore against Melkor I have never seen in any other being."

"But is Morgoth... Melkor, not destroyed?" said Eowyn.

"Eventually, I joined him as a grudging partner in his feud and managed to temper his rage. Together with an alliance of Valar, we captured Morgoth. But the Manwe the brother of Melkor, unable to understand the evil that corrupted Melkor, released him." the other woman continued, ignoring Eowyn for a moment; "Harry swore then that if he saw Manwe again, he would seek the same vengeance as he sought against his brother. It was lucky that when the Valar returned that Manwe, afraid of Harry's power, purposely avoided him. Thus together with the human mariner, Earendil, he and I fought and destroyed Melkor's dragons and cast him in chains to the state of un-being that Harry sought. And in these battles, Beleriand itself was smote into the sea."

"Love is a wonderful and terrible power." Eowyn whispered.

"Aye, yet do not shy from it, as it can be a blessing like no other." said Ceridwin; "I would beg a boon of you, to ride with me today."

"To war?" asked Eowyn.

"To whatever comes our way." Ceridwin answered.

"I do not know if my king would allow it." Eowyn demurred.

"I can be fairly convincing." said Ceridwin, twirling a curved dwarf-made dagger around one hand, one of a set of weapons and armour gifted to the descended Maia by the dwarven master smith, Telchar of Nogrod.

"You can indeed." a low, slightly raspy voice commented; "Her name was Írimë, and she was dear to me. Speak no more of her I beg you."

Harry wandered off in search of some food and a wineskin for the long ride east.

The eighth day of the third month in the three-thousandth and nineteenth year of the Third Age

A few days later, the four figures on horseback rode up onto the crest of the hill overlooking the ancient ruins of the once grand city of Osgiliath. Three banners fluttered in the breeze, one being Harry's own battle standard, a slightly tattered blood-red flag with a howling wolf's head emblazoned in black on it. The second was the blue and gold penant of Lothlorien flying from Haldir's glaive, and third was the forest green with a horse's head, flying proudly from Eowyn's lance. Supposedly, according to her explanations, Ceridwin had brought Eowyn along as handmaid, a more implausible excuse he'd never heard.

"No mercy. No quarter to be offered or given." Harry whispered; "Ceridwin, go with Haldir, take the archers and a hundred Titans, Eowyn, with me, we'll take what's left. Kill anything that stands in your path."

Ceridwin and Haldir simply nodded their heads before tapping their armoured heels against the flank of their horses, spurring them back to their small force. Harry trotted over to the ranks of his own men, with Eowyn following. Their chargers were pawing the ground, impatient to see battle. The men on their backs sat, silent, no shaking of spears, no rattling of shields. Utter silence, only interrupted by the sound of horses snorting and the hoof-beats of his own horse trotting up.

"Arrow formation." Harry barked; "The last five on each side move up behind the point unit. Eowyn, stay close to me, don't let yourself get cut off from the rest of us and surrounded."

"Aye." she replied, hefting her shield slightly on her left arm.

The double arrowhead meant that after they'd burst through enemy lines that the ten inside the arrowhead would be able to burst out and encircle the front of the enemy with the main force behind the enemy. Quickly, the Titans shifted to their positions behind the hill, trotting forward as Harry raised his spear in the air, the blood-red tattered banner catching the breeze and unfurling properly.

He jerked the spear higher in the air as they crested the hill. The entire force of two-hundred men roared out defiance to the enemy in the ruined city before breaking into a charge. This had the intended effect, as they poured down the hill, orcs poured out of the city, forming a ragged line just as the cavalry fell upon them. The worst way to defend from cavalry was to form a long line and this was exactly what the orcs did.

Braced in the stirrups, stood up, Harry leaned forward, a grin on his face as an orc raised a pitchfork at him. He parried it aside with the spear and let go as the weapon buried itself in its throat. Eowyn hurled an axe with a vicious throw, embedding it in the head of an orc, bracing the banner of Rohan against her stirrups and drawing her sword. Harry drew his sword, Ringil, as he circled to the left, coming up behind the orcs. He dropped one with a brutal cleaving slash through its crude head-armour as his charger bucked his head, tossing an orc aside, impaled on the unicorn-like spike on his forehead.

The line of orcs was shattered. Titans rode up and down the line on each side, cutting down the monsters, running them through and impaling them on spears. They had opened up a path into which the remaining Titans, along with Haldir's mounted archers poured, their blades plunging into every orc which entered their reach.

The next day was a massacre as the Titans hacked their way through the city, often treading the same streets time after time as they gradually made up ground. Spears were flung, swords sliced and arrows sought their targets as the powerful strike force rampaged through the ancient city, killing any of Sauron's creations they came across.

The ninth day of the third month in the three-thousandth and nineteenth year of the Third Age

Harry paced along one of the streets, Ceridwin on the other side from him and Eowyn close behind them, covering their backs as they hunted. It was near noon-tide when the distant sweeping of great wings was to be heard, and the great shadow of a Fell Beast covered the city. Harry and Ceridwin both reacted as Eowyn's shortbow didn't have the range for the approaching Nazgul.

Harry drew a yard-long barbed arrow from a quiver on his back, laying it on the bow and notching the string of the bow to the cut in the back of the shaft. Whipping back the string of the longbow, he released it, sending a yard-long arrow upward towards the lizard-like beast as it wheeled overhead. Opposite him, a shorter projectile was launched from a crossbow that Ceridwin had couched against her shoulder.

Immediately, a hail of arrows from elsewhere in the city joined their offerings, peppering the Fell Beast with elvish shafts, sending it plunging to the earth. Harry moved swiftly and whipped back the string, seating another arrow, this one with a ceramic tip which would shatter on impact, spreading a deadly toxin onto any flesh it touched.

With the Nazgul on its dead mount plunging straight towards them and couldn't miss. The toxic arrow hurtled towards the rider on its back. He'd calculated roughly the speed and angle of descent and was pleased to see that he truly couldn't have missed the corrupted being. However strong it was, the venom would destroy it.

A few minutes later, Harry and Eowyn joined forces with the elfin archers as Ceridwin took up position in a ruined tower from which her crossbow released its deadly payload.

"We found the body of the Fell Beast's rider, I didn't think that the Nazgul could die." stated Haldir as the two greeted each-other with a terse nod, hand holding a short bow with an arrow still resting on it.

"They can now." Harry smiled nastily; "But there are eight more, including the Witch King of Angmar. And they won't be pleased that one of their number is destroyed."

"Aye, and they come now." added Ceridwin as she dashed down the stairs of a ruined tower; "Harry, head up to the tallest point and try and bring as many down now. It's mere hours until the Rohirrim arrive with Gandalf..."

He nodded and vanished silently, appearing atop the highest point of the city. He hadn't known the Rohirrim would invade Gondor, even if it was in spirit of comradeship, but he wouldn't question. Ceridwin could see things that no other, including he, were able to. Settling into a meditative trance, he stood, staff held in both hands on the edge of the ruined tower. As his magical senses flooded the ruins, he felt the incursion of the corrupted creatures that were the Nazgul.

Closing his burning emerald eyes, he felt out at the skies, churning up a storm of truly epic proportions. Harry continued pouring magic into the staff as a brisk wind rose, whipping his robes about him. He felt the magic as two of the Nazgul descended, circling around Ceridwin. She drove a spear into the underside of the belly of one Fell Beast before throwing a second, covered in the same deadly toxin straight into the chest of the second Nazgul. The moment that the first tumbled from his stricken beast onto the stones, it was hacked to bits by elvish blades, cut limb-from-limb.

Steadying his breathing, Harry began to chant in a tongue that served no other beasts or beings of Middle Earth, a forgotten tongue. Blasts of lightning began to issue from the black clouds overhead, hissing through the sky toward the flying monsters and their foul riders. It was draining, performing such powerful magics so often in a single day, but it was necessary.

He knew that Gandalf had made it to Minas Tirith ahead of the Titans and Elves, and had heard that the beacon of the White City had been lit, summoning aid from Rohan. He knew that Ceridwin had spent the days before the siege of Helm's Deep trying to rally aid, and that Theoden would find gathering soldiers far easier than he would have done without her aid. So he prayed that they were coming and that he could destroy the Nazgul before they inflicted immense casualties upon the Rohirrim.

A whispered word of power and he summoned all the destruction he could upon the foe. All but one of the Ring Wraiths were unmade, the last throwing himself from his steed and choosing to fall over being fried by hundreds of millions of volts of electricity. Harry left his trance, magic washing back into his body from where it had been bouncing around the city, supplying him with information. Below, the clatter of hooves and a loud snorting noise rang out as tired horses who had raced across the length of Rohan and south along the Anduin entered the city.

Dropping off the tower, he formed a cushion of magic around his feet for the landing. Looking around, Harry found his charger, a huge black horse, ironically named Winter, clattering his hooves against the worn cobbles of the ruined city. Sparks flew as the horse swivelled around, bucking slightly as his master appeared from above. A flick of Harry's hand and Winter trotted over, his, armour a mix of leather and chainmail, along with the forehead plate with a long spike on it clinking loudly with each powerful hoof-beat against the cobblestones.

Pulling himself into the saddle, Harry tapped his heels into Winter's flank and clattered off around the streets. He just arrived at where the Nazgul had landed to find it shuddering and thrashing in a magical grip some five feet from Ceridwin and ten feet off the ground, her hand held palm-out using magic to crush its throat.

The corrupted creature's weapons lay abandoned on the ground as it continued to thrash around, clutching at its neck as Ceridwin slowly squeezed the life out of it. Raising her right hand, a flanged mace materialised in it, with which she dealt a horrifically powerful blow to the head of the enemy. The fearsome helmet of the Witch King was soon mangled and the body of the once-fearsome creature lay limp.

A negligent gesture from Ceridwin and the corpse was hurled into a wall, limp and pitiful. She picked up his sword and threw it to Harry.

"Maybe you'll be able to do something better with it." she stated as Harry trotted over on Winter, grabbing her arm and hoisting her into the saddle behind him.

"Thanks love, but where're the Titans and the elves?" he asked, tucking the sword into a leather belt on the horse-armour.

"They've moved out with the remainder of Faramir's forces because the Rohirrim are about to sweep the city, I suggest we get clear." Ceridwin replied.

Harry immediately nudged Winter into a canter as Ceridwin wrapped her arms around his waist. A few Orcs got in their way and were hacked down for their trouble, but they arrived on the edge of the city just in time to see Gandalf at the head of a force of Rohirrim cavalry rampaging into the ruins. The broad streets of the ancient city would suit them well, while the Titans with the assistance of the Lothlorian elves would continue clearing the backstreets and alleyways of Sauron's orcs.

On the main street from the western walls to the Anduin bridge, orcs formed ranks, blocking the oncoming riders. Then from behind, led by Harry, Ceridwin and Eowyn on horseback, the Titans struck, followed by a barrage of elvish arrows from every ruined building that overlooked the orcish army. Caught between the charging Rohirrim, the steadfast Titans and a barrage of lethal arrows, the orcs broke ranks and tried to scatter but, hemmed in by the forces of the West and the stones of the ancient city, they had nowhere to go. Thus they died in such numbers that the Anduin for three days would run black with orcish blood.

In the woodland near Privet drive, two cloaked figures raced about as a heavily-bearded man in slightly-less-garish-than-usual robes appeared with his deputy, a severe looking woman in tartan robes, followed moments later by a sallow, hook-nosed man in billowing black robes.

"So, how does this work." asked Dumbledore.

An Unspeakable handed him a simple gold coin.

"This is a self-contained ritual which will, to put it simply, push you along the trace of the dimension-hop. Firstly, remember that your target may not be alive or he may only just have arrived, depending on the passing of time. Secondly, languages may be different, cultures. Even species." warned the Unspeakable; "However, feel free to take notes and samples to report back to us with."

The three took hold and the Unspeakable simply prodded the coin with his wand and walked away. Five seconds later, there was a bright flash and the three vanished, leaving just the hooded men.

"Well, that's done, back to base." ordered the Unspeakable as several more materialised out of the shadows; "If they don't come back we simply write it off as a bad Portkey."

The tenth day of the third month in the three-thousandth and nineteenth year of the Third Age

"It is not enough!" Harry barked, pounding his mailed fist on the table set in the centre of the ruined great hall of Osgiliath. It had been a night and half a day since the Rohirrim had cleansed the city, and now the council of war sat discussing the battles to come.

"What would you have me do?" asked Gandalf; "Saruman's fortress has been cleansed and with it much of his forces. The Nazgul have been wiped out and we've pushed back the armies of darkness to outwith the city."

"Yet we sit and debate while Sauron could be driving his minions west. And what of Saruman, for he is not easily defeated, he could be setting up a new breeding ground for the Uruk-hai as we lie inactive, licking our wounds." Harry replied with a sardonic raised eyebrow; "What I would have you do... Muster as many cavalrymen as you can here. Bring up the infantry and continue pushing back."

"I have to agree with Harry." Aragorn stated; "We're holding our own, but with the wraiths gone, along with over twenty-thousand of the various creatures the darkness have fielded against us. We should strike while the dark forces are scattered. If for nought else, for Frodo."

"Have we not suffered enough casualties? Frodo's mission bears little hope, and though my old mentor Saruman lingers beneath the waters of the Isen, we still have the Black Lands to our east.." Gandalf asked; "Is this not inviting more death and bloodshed than we would suffer if they struck here, for should we dig in and build our defences so that we might stand more hope against Sauron, to bring him to terms to be banished from these lands."

"Death and bloodshed are a necessary part of war Gandalf, though I cannot pretend not to be glad that Saruman is ended. A most powerful speaker, a man who could persuade anyone to do anything..." said Harry; "However, how many cavalrymen do we have at readiness?"

"Four-thousand of Rohan's cavalry with more coming." replied the wizard; "But should we get Gondor's allegiance, we would also have several thousand infantry and cavalry."

"There are two places to cross the Anduin. Here and Cair Andros, upstream. I haven't had word from the garrison there for days, Aragorn, take a thousand men on the west bank up to Cair Andros, Ceridwin and I'll take fifteen-hundred up the east bank. Haldir, bring your archers and my Titans up the west bank along with any other infantry you feel like bringing." Harry ordered, gesturing to a map laid on the table; "Aragorn, your route is shorter, it'll take about four hours maximum to get there. My route is a bit longer, allow me an hour more and we'll hit them from two directions. Haldir, at a brisk march it'll probably take half-a-day on foot."

"And what then?" asked Eowyn, who was present in place of her father who had remained at Helm's Deep.

"We can either dig in and hold or take the sorcerer's suggestion and go on the offensive." stated the injured Faramir, the son of Denethor the Regent, his arm in a make-shift sling; "I'd like to cement our position but not write off the idea of attacking. As long as Sauron still commands a single beast or being then we are at risk..."

"What stops further attacks here while you deplete our forces?" asked Gandalf, ever playing the devil's advocate, not wanting rash action to cripple the hope of the light. "We stand here, a bastion between the fertile lands and peaceful folk of Gondor, that we might turn back an assault before it reaches them."

"You will still have fifteen-hundred able cavalrymen, and whatever foot-soldiery we leave. You yourself said further men were on their way... remember that Sauron is a powerful, semi-immortal fallen deity bound to a single ring. However, he commands hordes of ill-bred beasts. We need to slight his fortresses and massacre his minions while your little friends hopefully can put an end to the man himself." Harry added.

"Isengard is gone, the Ents have razed it to the ground. Maybe there is true hope." conceded the wizard; "Go now and destroy that which should not exist. Sauron will wish to exact swift and terrible vengeance. Strike before he can, for now we see either the rise of freedom, or the fall of the free and the beginning of the rein of Sauron eternal. I simply pray that you do not cause the latter."

Harry nodded to Aragorn as he and Ceridwin rose;

"Assemble your men, take a thousand, I'll take fifteen-hundred, if you encounter any more of our little enemies, drive them into the mud and bury them." Aragorn ordered coldly; "Two blasts on my personal horn and you attack. Eowyn, the warriors of Rohan are yours to command. Do so wisely."

Aragorn and Eowyn rose from their seats and followed the two sorcerers out, the four hoisting themselves into their saddles. A few short minutes later, Harry and Ceridwin sat on their horses, and after horns rang out over the floodplains of the river, a great host of cavalry, mostly lancers, a few mounted archers assembled before them.

In the back of a smoky tavern in the great, white-walled city of Tirith, ones eyes would simply skip over a table, seeing it and its occupants, but never really noticing either.

"Have you heard, Gandalf, the White Wizard rides east with an army from Theoden of Rohan." commented one tavern gossip.

"It's not Gandalf that should worry Sauron, he understands mercy and compassion, even on the battlefield. It is the Black Sorcerer who Sauron ought to fear. A more fearsome warrior I have never seen." interjected an off-duty soldier; "But also, the third mage, his woman fights ahead of the vanguard in any battle. She led two-thousand to relieve the siege of Helm's Deep. I am told that it was on her orders that Isengard was razed to the ground, though these are rumours only. Even the niece of Theoden of Rohan rides in the line of battle and is faster with sword, spear and axe than any amongst us."

"And more recently;" added another soldier who pulled off his helmet and pushed back his chainmail as he stepped in; "Word came from the ruins of Osgiliath that the last of Sauron's forces were driven back across the bridge of the Anduin and massacred by archers and cavalry, along with the Witch King of Angmar and every other Nazgul. The sorceress killed him personally and took Angmar's sword as a prize, a trophy of his fall."

"I almost pity whatever evil builds in Mordor." commented the tavern maid; "Word is that even a hundred times over have a thousand of the abominations used by Sauron and Sarumen been slaughtered. At the Siege of Helm's Deep they were caught between a cornered animal in the fortress and Mithrandir's Rohirrim. Then the host of the black sorcerer fight through Osgiliath, killing any enemy that moves, and now they are joined by Mithrandir's host of the Rohirrim."

"What's scary is that the Black Istar could rule if he wanted... The heir of King Isildur rides with them, Aragorn son of Arathorn, as well as King Theoden and Gandalf the Istar, who all bow before him. And if they didn't, he could easily raze Middle Earth to the fires of creation and recreate it in his image. Yet he is content to lead in battle." commented the second soldier; "I always wondered why some called him a 'Potter'. I learnt just days ago that a witness at Helm's Deep watched as he ripped up a battlefield and re-shaped it, huge pits, harnessed the falling water and the lightning. And with his woman, he released a most terrible of demons upon the Uruk-hai, smaller but more powerful than a Balrog. It didn't survive long under the numbers it opposed, but it still tore through them like a scythe through wheat. Now he sits at Osgiliath with the Council of War."

Dumbledore leaned forward across their table;

"Severus, try and get a map, and for Merlin's sake, don't draw attention to yourself. Minerva, we'll need three horses, I'll stay here and listen out for further information." he whispered.

After the sun sets on the tenth day and before it rises on the eleventh day of the third month in the three-thousandth and nineteenth year of the Third Age

The orcs were holding the majority of the island of Cair Andros save for a small part of the fortified island where the garrison and some civilians were holed up. The river soon ran black with blood as light cavalry struck from both sides in the darkness of the night backed by archers and the shock-warfare of the Titans, driving the orcs into the fast-flowing waters at spearpoint from behind their great shields.

Storming in, the streets were soon littered with the bodies of Sauron's minions as the island was once more overrun. The beleaguered garrison burst out, sallying forth to add another side to the attack on the now-beleaguered orcs. They were cut down without mercy, as every man and elf knew no mercy would be shown to them.

Several hours later, many miles south-east of Cair Andros, Harry smirked as he stood outside the spectral fortress of Minas Morgul. Once a great city, similar to Minas Tirith, spoken of in hushed awe as Minas Ithil, it was now soaked in dark sorcery and evil. And now it was condemned.

Brandishing the Witch King's sword, he lit it up with flames and touched it to a long trail of oil running through the gutters of the dark citadel. Combined with his dark robes, the dark sword and some light touches of his magic to their minds persuaded the orcs guarding the citadel that he was indeed the deceased Witch King, so they didn't question his storing of Sauron's devil fire, a most powerful of explosives, in every building, with trails of the most flammable lamp oil stretching down to the gates.

Touching the sword to the oil, he strode out and ripped his staff from the earth, slamming the butt into the ground. Every gate in the ancient walls of the fallen city slammed closed, sealed with magic so that no amount of force could open them. The entire citadel was cut off. And burning. And full of explosives.

Neither he nor Ceridwin looked back as Minas Morgul was raised to the ground. Aragorn rode in wide-eyed silence while two-and-a-half thousand cavalrymen cheered behind them. The spoils of war were good, and they would win. Their commanders were two powerful sorcerers, each carrying the swords of the Nazgul, while the future ruler of Gondor was a warrior who led by example, at the head of his men.

The eleventh day of the third month in the three-thousandth and nineteenth year of the Third Age

Early that day, for the assembled soldiery in Osgiliath, the sun rose early, a great flaming ball on the eastern horizon... but it was not the sun. Minas Morgul burned and crumbled, taking with it the remaining forces of the deceased (properly) Witch King of Angmar.

The cheering intensified as the host behind the sorcerers and Aragorn thundered onto the flood-plains to the east of the city, armour, spears and swords glinting in the sun as it truly rose. Gandalf, Faramir and Eowyn rode out to meet the victorious force along with a small bodyguard.

"Gentlemen." stated the wizard.

"Minas Morgul is nought but bad memories and rubble today." Harry yelled, eliciting cheering and rattling of weapons from behind him.

"Foolhardy." commented Gandalf; "But it paid off evidently. I do fear Sauron's reprisal."

"We'll need a few hours sleep... maybe until mid-morning, but then we'll be ready to march onward." Harry shrugged, wheeling about to face the cavalry; "DISMISSED. Get some sleep and clean your arms."

"I've got a total of six-thousand cavalry, four-thousand infantry and some other assorted allies who we can field." stated Faramir forcefully; "Our own reprisal on Sauron should be swift and terrible. Hundreds of years of wrath have we to deliver upon his diseased head."

The twelfth day of the third month in the three-thousandth and nineteenth year of the Third Age

A few hours later, Harry awoke to something scratching at a bit of exposed flesh between the arm of his chainmail and his plate gauntlet. Sitting up gently and taking care not to awake Ceridwin on whose armoured chest his head was resting, he slowly blinked in the sunlight.

Perched on the cobbles next to them was a gigantic eagle, one of their closest allies and companions looking far more agitated than was normal.

"Arne. What's the problem." he asked, seeing the great avian hopping from foot to foot.

"They come, in numbers and weapons far greater than our own. Marched by The Mouth to the Black Gates, every foul creature under Sauron's command is marching to the gates my lord." replied the eagle; "They will descend through the valley of Udûn to make war upon us. And at the same time Sauron rouses his army in Ithilien, orcs, machines of war and beasts of untold size ridden by legions from the Haradrim."

The eagle turned his head to gaze into Harry's eye, allowing the sorcerer's mind to brush over his. The images that came were of Mount Doom belching smoke over legions of orcs in such numbers as to terrify any good free man, elf or dwarf. Then similar numbers defiling the green and pleasant lands of Ithilien with dark sorcery, catapults, siege towers, rams and all machines of war that could be created. Creatures he had only seen rarely in the furthermost lands of Harad bearing towers of fabric and wood on their backs. What could truly be done in the face of such terrible enemies.

"Now is the hour when all is made, or all is broken." the eagle added.

Harry immediately shook Ceridwin awake and relayed Arne's message. They quickly found their twin black chargers and pulled themselves into the saddle. Sparks were sent skittering as they galloped through the ruined city streets toward the ruined great hall where the commanders were certain to be.

Barely slowing as Winter leapt over the short flight of stairs into the hall, he only reined him in as they veered away from crashing into the table.

"Gandalf, Aragorn!" he bellowed; "Rouse the troops, Sauron's Mouth marches his host upon us via the Black Gates, while another force comes from the south, through Ithilien. We cannot defend Osgiliath sufficiently, we must either ride out and strike one or other army before they are ready or retreat. These ruins cannot be held against such numbers."

The wizard gave him a scrutinizing look and nodded before whistling. Shadowfax, the Istar's snow-white charger, trotted in, Gandalf's sword slung at his side.

"Aye, I'll rouse the troops. I'll have them assembled on the eastern plains in an hour, maybe less." he agreed.

"Go north, meet the Mouth. I will follow in time." Aragorn barked; "I have ridden in the face of death, but this time I will ride south with death at my back."

"You claimed their allegiance." Harry stated from atop Winter.

"Aye, the Cursed shall rip each orc that threatens our freedom limb from limb." said the Dunedain King with a savage smile; "I have sat by too long with such a weapon at my side... but now I shall be able to unleash it in such horrific glory that no orc will dare speak of it in a thousand years."

"And what of me sir?" asked Eowyn, walking in wearing her chainmail armour and bearing her sword.

"Women should not have to see the terror of the battlefield." stated Faramir.

"Enough Faramir, she has ridden alongside me time and time again in the last few days and done me great service time and time again!" countered Ceridwin, her black charger Moonlight bucking slightly, kicking up more sparks; "And as a woman, have I not always fought in the vanguard. Let her come. Eowyn is cleansed of the delusions of honourable warfare, but she knows this world is not a pleasant place unless it is fought for."

Eowyn nodded and walked out, evidently intent on getting a horse, followed by the men. The hall quickly emptied, save for the two sorcerers.

"Love you." Harry whispered to Ceridwin; "Get through this alive, because I couldn't live without you."

"It isn't just you, stay alive sweetheart." she replied, embracing him, despite the layers of metal each was wearing. They did not need skin-to-skin contact to convey their love.

A moment later, the reverberating tones of a great horn sounded on the eastern plains as Eowyn and Aragorn came in wearing full battle armour.

"It's time." stated the heir of Isildur solemnly; "Ride north with all swiftness. Destroy all in your path. We can have no mercy for anyone who stands in our path. Faramir, to you I entrust my kingdom, do with it what you will if I do not return."

Faramir silently raised his hand to touch his forehead, a sign of deference. Gandalf, atop Shadowfax, Harry riding Winter, Ceridwin seated on Moonlight and Eowyn on Windfola clattered out of the hall. Harry snatched his banner from a soldier as he galloped through the streets toward the eastern floodplains. Leaning forward as far as he could with his great helmet mounted on the pommel of the saddle, he sped up as they were joined by Gandalf and his Titans who had procured their horses. The Rohirric battle standard in Eowyn's hand billowed out with the elvish pennants and the blood red of the sorcerers over the column to a resounding cheer from the massed soldiery.

Galloping out onto the plains, they were greeted by a host of men, ranked two-hundred long and forty deep who rattled lances, axes and swords against shields. Meeting the head of the force, Harry wheeled the small column of just over three-hundred mounted men to face them, Winter bucking dramatically under him, his rider easily staying in the saddle as he was used to the horse's hi-jinks.

They were joined minutes later by a thousand elfin archers mounted atop white horses, falling into the back of the force.

"Today, TODAY, we ride for the Black Gates and Mordor. Let no faint-hearted man, woman or elf come for we face one of the greatest evils of this world. Sauron has dispatched his Mouth and a host of the most foul creatures who themselves march for the Gates. WE WILL MEET THEM ON THE FIELD OF BATTLE! SAURON IS A POWERFUL CREATURE, BUT WITHOUT HIS ARMIES, IS JUST THAT!" Harry thundered; "AND LET NO WARRIOR FALL AND HIS DEATH NOT BE AVENGED TEN-FOLD, NAY, A SCORE FOR EVERY MAN!"

He lobbed the banner to the commander of his Titans and drew the Witch King's sword, lighting it up with flames as he wheeled around. Dropping the sword to point north, he spurred Winter into a trot, the entire cavalry unit moving to follow, the thrum of hooves shaking the earth.

Hidden under numerous concealment spells at one side of the host, three riders clad in clothes which were utterly unremarkable watched and listened.

One sneered half-heartedly at the thunderous call from the head of the army. The second bowed her head, knowing there was nothing she could do to aid the son of her former pupils, and yet felt great pride at the person who was evidently a leader of men and all beings assembled. The third looked on calculatingly but with a slight look of approval.

"What do we do now Albus?" asked the second, a woman.

"Follow would probably be the best idea. I must say young Harry is a masterful orator, he'd make quite the politician." said the eldest male.

"Brat's too brash, a Gryffindor if I ever saw one." sneered the younger male; "A warrior maybe..."

The nineteenth day of the third month in the three-thousandth and nineteenth year of the Third Age

The ride to the Black Gates was long and tiring, lasting day after day, night after night for a whole week. The vanguard rode far ahead of the main host, and camped far ahead. Various ambushes were put down brutally, leaving the carcasses of assorted creatures strewn across the track.

Finally, after a night's camp not far from the Black Gates, they came to the hateful monolith, a sign of Sauron's dominion of Mordor, a once fertile and pleasant land, to find it seemingly deserted.

Sat astride Winter, Harry rapidly put together a plan, utilising every bit of his cunning and tactical genius, and had his men put it into action. Pits were dug in the mud in which the Titans hid, their mud-covered shields providing protection and camouflage for them to await the battle to come. Arne reported that the Mouth and his army was massing on the far side of the gates, so, dismounting, Harry and Ceridwin strode forward.

"Let's make it through this and laugh as we remember a long-gone war." he said softly, his staff appearing in his hand, motes of powerful magic swirling around him.

"And let no other take Sauron's place." added Ceridwin, her staff appearing, flaring her magic, her appearance changing slightly, features lengthening to become far sharper, a more fierce visage.

The two began a slow chant, steadily increasing in speed and volume, the intensity increasing as motes of magic swirled around them. Gandalf too began to murmur words of power, each elf backing them picking up the chant. Finally, the three mages lunged their staffs in the direction of the gates. An immense shockwave formed up and drove towards the the Morannon. The blast drove into the Black Gates, stone falling rapidly from the shattered facade of the gates, falling to the earth as the magic tore into them.

Repeating this once more, the stone was finally torn asunder and cast into the army hidden beyond, dust rising from the earth and stone crumbling into rubble. Slowly, before their eyes, the stone and rubble began to collapse, falling, crushing orcs and Uruk-hai before turning to dust, obliterated by their spellwork.

Slowly, a powerful, sinister figure rode forward backed by fifty monsters to where the two stood. Harry wound two blasts on his horn and the host of cavalry came up from beyond a ridge behind them, still hundreds of feet off from where they stood, backed directly by Gandalf and Eowyn.

"So, the messenger comes forth where his master cannot." Harry taunted; "Sometimes I doubt Sauron's existence, other times I doubt his well-being if he never appears- I do hope he isn't permanently incapacitated."

"Be silent sorcerer." hissed the Mouth; "I have come to offer you a place as one of My Lord's lieutenants, if you but bend your knees to him, and that the lands west of the Anduin River shall not be razed to the ground if they pay tribute to Mordor and cease bearing arms against Sauron the Great."

"You mistake us." thundered Gandalf; "We are not here to beg the mercy of Sauron, accursed that he is, we are here to see you destroyed and all with you. I bring a message from Aragorn son of Arathorn, whose line The Deciever has wronged. He demands that the armies of Mordor are to disband without delay and that he is to depart these lands, never to return and never to do ill upon a living creature again!"

The Mouth hissed as Gandalf's immense magical power descended on him, the voice of the Maia sounding like great bells in his ears, and the man himself burning in white light to someone as steeped in darkness as the Fallen Man.

"Tell Mairon the day he bends his knee to us, pays tribute to the men of the west, we shall not raze his fortresses to the earth and obliterate his armies." Ceridwin added, causing the Mouth to hiss in anger at her utter defiance. She held the fallen man in a burning gaze, one of utter contempt.

"I give you one last chance, prostrate yourselves before me and beg for the mercy of Sauron the Great!" the Mouth ordered.

"Thanks for the offer." began Harry.

"But no." finished Ceridwin.

A moment later Fingolfin's keen blade drove the point at his enemy, piercing through the Mouth's helmet and deep into his head with one thrust. Before Harry could withdraw it, under his arm Ceridwin's curved scimitar hissed through the air and severed the diseased Mouth's neck, hacking his head from his shoulders. A third weapon, a spear hurled from one of the Titans embedded itself half the length of its shaft in the Mouth.

"The guard!" yelled the leader of the Titans.

Harry and Ceridwin wheeled around to see fifty Uruk-Hai and orcs charging towards them. They split left and right, with their own guard, Gandalf, Eowyn and Aragorn charging forward.

It took less than two minutes for them to hack their way through the enraged bodyguard the Mouth of Sauron had brought, using no magic, using no more than their blades. As Gandalf, Eowyn and Aragorn galloped back to their lines, Harry wound another blast on his horn.

Elven archers dashed out from between the cavalry, bows half-drawn with arrows nocked. Harry and Ceridwin knelt briefly as the archers raised their longbows and unleashed a hailstorm of barbed arrows into the charging army, which, though deprived of its leader, was still intent on attacking.

After two volleys hissed over their heads, the momentum of the charging army was thoroughly broken. Exchanging a glance with Ceridwin, Harry wound another blast on his horn. Swords in hands, he and Ceridwin strode forward as the hidden Titans burst from their hidey holes, mud quickly falling from their shields.

The first attack was repulsed with such ferocity, combined with the ever-present arrows which fell a long way ahead of the Titans, in the depths of Sauron's forces, that the attackers fell back a good distance, leaving the blood-spattered Titans stood triumphant on heaps of bodies of orcs and Uruk-hai. Near a thousand lay dead, pierced by arrows, cut by swords or destroyed with the most powerful of magics.

"FORM SQUARE!" Ceridwin screamed as orcs mounted on wargs attacked.

Where a line of men would have broken, the Titans, who quickly formed a square, pushed off the attack, breaking its momentum again and falling on the wargs and their riders with swords and spears. Soon, the attack failed, the bodies littered around the small unit showing how disorganized shock-warfare couldn't triumph over fast-moving but disciplined defence. They had run at the shields of the Titans, half slaughtered by arrows before they could make contact with those same shields, then as they closed the distance, the orcs and wargs were peppered with axes, javelins and spears hurled at them. Those that survived were slaughtered as they impacted the wall of metal.

Striding back to their horses, Harry and Ceridwin climbed into the saddle, the former pulling on his grim-looking great helmet as they cantered back to their lines, followed by the Titans who ran back at a rapid pace, having retrieved the thrown spears from the bodies of those pierced by them.

With the enemy still in disarray after the furious defence, Ceridwin saw lines forming, two deep, across the width of the valley, orcish infantry.

"Hit them with the cavalry!" she called to Harry.

Harry grinned widely, a vicious grin, and once more raised his horn, carved from the fang of a great, long-deceased dragon, to his lips. Five long, loud blasts echoed across the battlefield.

The first five ranks of the forces of men and elves, each made of two-hundred cavalry, broke forward and charged. Pennants on spears fluttered, brightly coloured in contrast to the dull, hateful dimness of Mordor. With their leaders at their head, the first two Cohorts galloped forward.

Being the first to hit the disarrayed enemies at the head of a thousand men, Harry and Ceridwin on Winter and Moonlight pulled their horses into a jump. The armoured mounts smashed into the first couple of ranks before hooves began to fly and the long spikes on their forehead armour were used to pierce the orcs. They each delivered a single spear-thrust before chucking them into the orcs and drawing their swords.

The line quickly broke as the faster cavalry moved beyond the line of orcs and circled around, within minutes a thousand of the malformed beasts were strewn across the width of the Morannon. With disarrayed orcish soldiery, the cavalry quickly eliminated two more small groups of them before falling back.

Without the time to organize their archers to counter the charge, or even form a wall of spears, Sauron's forces had no defence against the speeding cavalry that had hit them with such power and momentum, smashing them back with the sheer force of the charge. The horsemen wielded their spears, axes and swords brutally, showing no quarter, quickly and efficiently disposing of their opponents. No man spared an ounce of force behind his blows, for he knew that there was no mercy for him should he show any to his enemies.

The fighting had been hard, fast, brutal and fluid, leaving the frontal forces of Sauron's army utterly decimated and in absolute disarray. With the Titans covering their backs, the first two cohorts of the Rohirrim and assorted other allies fell back to their own lines. After providing a rearguard, the Titans too withdrew, leaving a trail of bodies behind them. As they jogged back, elven arrows hissed overhead, seeking targets in the remainder of the front of the dark army.

Harry kept track of the orcish army, and seeing five square-formed groups of orc infantry formed up and marching forwards, he turned and galloped along the line of the army of the light. As he passed with his sword raised high, he heard bows being drawn to full extension, and when his sword fell, a thousand arrows buzzed through the air, falling onto the hundred-strong squares of orcs.

Twice more they volley-fired, and while the five-hundred were not all dead, such were the losses, that as reinforcements raced up from behind, still in disarray, the formations collapsed.

The two cohorts of cavalry who had charged, had also headed to the rear of the army of the west to rest and recuperate. At the opposite end of the battlefield, as disorganized reinforcement combined with three volleys of arrows decimating them, the orcish squares had collapsed. Harry raised his dragon-fang horn, and moments later another five blasts of a horn rang out, rousing the cavalry again.

Hooves thundered across the plane as another two cohorts charged, sweeping up the remains of the squares and the reinforcements, who were single orcs just running to join their fellows, instead of any organized advance, allowing a complete massacre.

For hour after hour, the same tactic repeated. When lines of orcs formed up, they were swept up by cavalry. When there was a charge, the Titans took the brunt of it and massacred the attackers. When squares of orcs formed up, the archers softened them, allowing fresh cavalry to utterly destroy them, an eventual retreat backed by the Titans who fought long and viciously, followed by more arrows, then fresh cavalry.

The sole organised attack was blunted by the elvish archers and by scattered caltrops, which Harry took care to vanish before their own cavalry charged. The orcs fell on the centre of the formation, right into the phalanx of the Titans. Then the horns of the formation, the Rohirric cavalry, swept in from each side, and the Gondorian heavy infantry reinforced the centre to annihilate the orcish attack.

Their horses long abandoned and returned to their allies' lines, Harry and Ceridwin carved a bloody path into the depths of Sauron's army, finally settling where they fought on a great mountain of orc corpses which ever-grew as sorcery and blades killed ever more.

Despite neither having the great bulky stature of some of the great warriors behind them, the two punched well above their weight, leaving a fifty-foot radius area around them where bodies were strewn and few dared come into, for fear that the roots would crush them, fire consume them, or lightning cook them... it was a long list of many ways to die, and the radius was ever expanding.

Eventually four cohorts of cavalry simultaneously attacking along with the cover of the elven archers and the brutal swordsmanship of the Titans allowed them to break through to where the two mages were reaping hell upon the orc army. With their horses following behind.

Harry and Ceridwin quickly mounted up and joined the routing of Sauron's army, few escaping the less-than-tender mercies of their own army.

The twenty-fifth day of the third month in the three-thousandth and nineteenth year of the Third Age

Galloping forward fast, Harry lifted himself in the stirrups as Winter pitched a Black Uruk over, pierced by his forehead-spike in a brutal headbutt. With momentum and his balanced position, Harry used it to inflict a most terrible of blows on a second Black Uruk, cutting it from the helmet-covered cranium deep into the neck.

Slowing to a canter, he continued deeper into the gorge where more Uruks fled. Winter had became nervous, the foul air and sinister atmosphere disturbing him, though not stopping him from biting, kicking and spearing the creatures on the spike on his forehead.

A thick mist slowly descended and Harry slowed somewhat, beginning to wheel about to return to the main force when the whistle of a crossbow bolt rang through the mist moments before one slammed into the armour under his cloak, pinning it to him as the momentum threw him from the saddle. Cursing, he ripped the cloak off as it was impeding his movement, being held to the armour by the bolt.

"I liked that cloak!" he hissed at the group of fifty or more Black Uruks descending toward him from both sides of the gorge. A single glance had Winter galloping off back to the marauding army which had been cleansing Mordor of Sauron's hordes for over a week.

Raising his empty hand, Harry summoned the Uruk crossbowman to him, splitting his skull with a heavy sword-blow before the creature had even landed.

"You've been troublesome sorcerer." stated a voice using the Black Speech; "I believe that your end is nigh!"

"I shall take pleasure in returning you to the nothingness from which you came."Harry spat back in that same harsh, grating and foul language.

Stepping through the ranked Uruks who had poured down the sides of the gorge was a heavily-armoured figure somewhat taller than Harry, a spiked crown adorning his helmet and a massive flanged mace hanging from one gauntleted hand.

"I am immortal, foolish one, I cannot be destroyed. Were my Uruks not about to rip you limb from limb and devour you, I would offer you the same."chuckled the armoured figure sinisterly.

"Sauron, deluded and befouled, your end is nigh."Harry replied in an equally glacial tone.

Two steps to the right. One kick. The wince-inducing snap as the Uruk, who had just missed Harry with an over-extended axe-swing, suffered from a broken neck seemed to break a dam as the rest rushed him. They poured towards him, but then, Harry created a spear in his left hand. Those who could avoid the lethal thrusts of the spear inevitably fell to the brutal cuts delivered by the sword once held by the so-called Witch King.

But, all too soon, it was the master he had to face. Dodging, he avoided the howling descent of the mace on where he had been, Sauron's first attack. He was quick however to sweep the weapon around toward Harry who spun around and blocked the jarring blow with his sword, attacking by slicing at the gap at the hinge of Sauron's armoured knee.

Harry grunted in anger and swung the third sword of the fight at Sauron. His great battle staff was too many feet away to be easily reached, knocked out of his hand with nearly enough force to dislocate his wrist. One of the Nazgul blades was shattered on the ground, with shards of metal lodged in the seams of Sauron's armour. The Dark Lord wasn't too well off either. His armour was burnt, electrified, mangled and torn, but he was steadily gaining ground on the smaller, weaker human.

Sauron's darkness reached out, stifling the magic as the mage once again prepared to vanish. Cursing, Harry ran under the overhead blow of the mace, sword outstretched toward the armoured monstrosity. As he knew would happen, the hateful wail of pain came from the helmet as the sword sank in-between seams of armour before shattering.

A bellow of pain was released forcefully from Harry's lungs as Sauron backhanded him with his gauntleted left hand, sending him spinning into the rocks. Grabbing an Uruk sword, he rolled to his feet and slammed the spike of the sword into Sauron's shoulder, wrenching him forward before shattering the sword over his head.

The sound of his ribs breaking was as audible as the roar of agony as Sauron swung his mace straight into Harry's side, smashing him into the wall of the gorge once more. Gesturing with his left hand, Harry banished a dead Uruk into the armoured monolith with all his magical power.

Sauron was knocked over, only to gruesomely smash the corpse into the wall of the gorge with his mace before getting back to his feet. Summoning his staff to his hand, Harry directed an explosive blast at Sauron before running a glowing hand over his ribs. It would be awful after a few days, but he was able to continue fighting for the moment.

Getting to his feet, Harry quickly animated the corpses around him and set them on Sauron. It was barely a distraction as the armoured monstrosity smote each of them, one after another with the massive mace clutched in his gauntleted hands. His hellish scream rang out once more as Harry hosed him down with acid.

He leaned backward quickly as Sauron's mace swung at him. Not far enough. The edge of one of the flanges bit onto the lower edge of his great helmet and ripped it from his head, smashing it into unrecognisable scrap against the rocks. Harry conjured a sword, vanishing his staff back into the ether where it went when not being used. A flurry of berserk blows beset Sauron, the last one striking him, cutting deep along another seam in the armour of his right shoulder.

"You!" bellowed Sauron upon seeing Harry's face in the light cast by the flaming Witch King's sword.

"Mairon, you must have suspected that more than one of the oldest of beings would survive in this land." Harry panted, holding off Sauron's mace with sheer strength and more than a little magic, yet he smirked, eyes burning as he taunted Sauron in Valarin, the language of the Valar; "We last met at the door Angband, I smote your beloved dragon, Thorordaub and wear her hide to protect me from your minions. You still give her purpose."

Sauron suddenly allowed Harry to drive his mace upwards with the blade of his sword. Then suddenly, as he was losing his balance, an armoured fist slammed into his stomach, sending him tumbling to the valley floor. Before he could react, Sauron was upon him, driving the head of his immense mace upon the conjured shield that Harry bore, and with that one blow, it was shattered beneath the flanges of the terrible weapon, and a second blow bent the plate armour on his shoulder, only the dragon hide and chainmail underneath stopping it killing him.

Harry summoned Ringil from the nether world it rested in, as Sauron cast aside his mace, picking up Angmar's flaming blade and preparing to end the fallen sorcerer. Harry tried to heal himself again, but the oppressive presence of Sauron constrained his magic, it let him down. His immortality only stopped him ageing, a sword through his heart, or indeed a great mace wielded by Sauron would spell his end. All he could think was that he wished he could see Ceridwin once more.

Throwing himself to his feet, eyes alight with berserker rage and a mask of unholy glee, Harry drove Ringil against Angmar's blade, the clash of steel shaking the earth as two superhuman beings fought. Sauron was flung backwards as his enemy drew lightning down onto the elvish sword and spun it into a shield which he then slammed into the dark lord.

Sauron withdrew his oppressive magics, concentrating instead on forging the darkness into a shield of his own to deflect any further magics. Harry, feeling his control of his own and Arda's magic, drove himself upon Sauron, Ringil thrust forward toward the dark lord. Sauron blocked the thrust and swung Angmar's sword down at Harry's head.

Once again, Fingolfin's blade rose, horizontal above his head to parry the cleaving blow. Then, pushed to a crouch by the force of the blow, the elven sword sang through the air as it looped about Harry's head and sliced across the weakest point of the armour about Sauron's foot. A wail of agony departed the head of the monolithic armoured being, followed by another sword-swing, carving a furrow a yard deep and twice as long in the ground.

Sauron pulled the sword from the ground and drove it, flames blazing black around the blade, at Harry, who brought Ringil up, smacking aside the cursed sword and lunging at Sauron. A faint clink was audible as the very tip touched Sauron's armour, scarring it before Harry was thrown aside by a blow from the dark lord's arm. Crumpled on the grass, he kept a deathly grip on the elvish sword.

"Iremember you, Dushorrat, sorcerer of darkness. You, who are so dark as to destroy anything that comes in your path, and yet you claim the companionship of a being of light. Deluded, she should have been with my master, he offered to make her his consort with such generosity that she spurned him and cursed his name." growled Sauron; "And you stood between her and the Lord of the Dark. Maybe she can kneel by my side when you are destroyed. She is not far after all..."

Sauron picked up his mace in his offhand, moving ponderously towards the crumpled form. Then he paused, whispering in the Black Speech as he warped the magic around him into tendrils of darkness which he directed at the bodies strewn around them, both the Black Uruks and beings dead long before, three thousand years they had rested in the ground of Mordor, for it was not clean enough to be described as earth, since the besieging of Sauron's fortress.

Harry picked himself up, leaning heavily on the sword, summoning his battle staff to him. He found himself stood fifty feet from his enemy with a hundred corpses around him. The Uruks he had just killed right down to what looked like the skeletons of men, elves and orcs. Cursing Sauron's defiling of the dead, he attacked. Driving the butt of the staff into the ground he unleashed a shockwave of magic, blasting apart the most decayed skeletons, the ones with no muscle nor flesh to hold together the bones.

One of the Black Uruk corpses barged forward, bulling into two half-decayed elves and throwing their limbs apart. The charging beast met a flash of elven steel as Ringil struck halfway up his head, followed by a sweep at hip level. Devoid of a mind and without legs to advance, the dark lord abandoned that being. It was near impossible and very draining to repair and reanimate the previously reanimated.

Standing his ground, Harry wielded Ringil and his staff with such ferociousness that even Sauron felt fear. After so many blows, the sorcerer still stood and fought. The skeletons had made up about a quarter of the reanimated, another quarter being the half-decayed, the rest the recently-slain Black Uruks. He had already destroyed a quarter, and quickly worked his way through the rest, mechanically cutting the legs out from under them and severing their heads.

"Mairon, you truly fear me so much that you desecrate the bodies of the long dead in such desperation at my presence?" Harry asked with a chilling laugh.

"IFEAR NO BEING, LIVING OR DEAD!" howled the fallen Maia, charging.

Harry stood his ground still, even as Mordor shook to the impacts of Sauron's armoured feet. He smiled in grim satisfaction as he saw a noticeable limp.

"You forget what I am. Darker than darkness itself when roused. The Flame of Udûn is but a mere fancy, a failed imitation of my magic. Cast your cursed soul into the abyss or face judgement before your maker." he roared in defiance of Sauron.

The distance was swiftly closed and the dark lord cast himself at Harry, who met him blow for blow. They were evenly matched in power as Mairon had been possibly the most powerful of the Maia, yet he was corrupted and reinforced with the evil that he had immersed himself in. Brandishing his staff at Sauron, Harry drove him back, two immense blows of the dark mace leaving craters knee-deep in the ground, but both missed their intended target.

A wave of black magic was sent his way, the armoured monolith issuing the dark smoke from a glowing mace-head. Harry held out, the eerie green glow of the crystal at the head of his staff rejecting the waves of black corruption. Ringil vanished from his hand as he placed both gauntleted hands on the wood and murmured an ancient spell.

Sauron was suddenly beset by his greatest nightmares. Love, freedom, a lack of order. He saw his own flames turn against him, consuming himself. Gathering his willpower, he pushed against the spell and returned to the real world. He was beset on all sides by real flames of such dark malice as to truly make him afraid. His gleaming armour scorched, the earth around him was blackened and cracked, even as he stood, the metal that protected him, bound with such enchantments as have never been replicated was beginning to buckle.

Hurling his mace at what he judged to be the source of the flames, Sauron charged, his chief lieutenant's weapon held high. Harry was prepared, he had seen the mace coming and dodged. The monolithic figure charged straight onto an immense mithril spear which sank straight into Sauron's stomach, piercing his armour at one of the seams.

The corrupted Maia slowly sank to his knees, head bowed. Harry summoned Ringil to his hand and stepped forward when cold, chillling laughter came from the fallen Sauron.

"Ha ha ha ha... You believe such a mere wound can undo one such as me... I am death itself..." Sauron laughed, drawing the mithril shaft from his body and throwing it aside.

He struck with renewed fervour as Harry staff vanished. Angmar's sword locked against the guard of Ringil, Sauron was still on the back foot, with Ringil pressing down towards his head. Ever so slowly, the sorcerer's magical strength pushed down on him, the tip of the blade driving a deep horizontal channel in the mask of Sauron's helmet over his right cheek, the darkness imbued in the metal unable to stand the elvish blade, used for nothing but the eradication of evil.

Then suddenly, Sauron burst forth. He leapt to his feet and drove Harry back with a series of ferocious blows, exchanged faster than the eye could see. Sparks flew from the battling swords, then the sorcerer was sent once again to the ground as Sauron swept his feet from under him and drove Angmar's sword towards his head. With only moments to act, Harry jerked his head over to one side, and the cursed steel slammed into the ground next to him, leaving a thin, long cut along his cheek which welled with blood.

Harry threw Sauron aside with a blast of magic, sending him spinning into the rocky wall of the valley before standing. The presence of the dark lord was ever oppressing him, the battle sapped his strength, the wounds sapped his mental strength, messages of pain entering his mind despite the spells he layered upon himself.

They both stood, swords borne in both hands above their heads as they clashed. Harry feinted towards Sauron's head, withdrew his sword and lunged at his torso. Sauron wailed as the elvish sword slammed through a seam of his armour, grabbed Ringil and Harry's hand, pushing them back from him. The blade was black with blood, but the dark lord wasn't finished. He struck fast, slashing Angmar's sword across Harry's stomach and then, as his enemy fell to his knees, struck him from behind with a brutal swing.

That was when the gorge rang out with a scream of of pure and utter fury met Harry's ears, along with the powerful hoof-beats of a war horse. His vision recovered just enough to see the fan of black hair and the burning golden eyes of his beloved atop a galloping Moonlight. Further behind were four figures he could not make out, also on horseback.

Throwing herself from the saddle with all the momentum of the charge, the enchanted sword she and Harry had spent years enchanting for just such a purpose delivered such a terrible blow that it rent Sauron's armoured head in two. That was the same moment as the ever-watchful and sinister eye began to shudder before imploding many miles away, but still visible. The armour before them and the dark creature within was nothing more than that.

Sauron had fallen. His immortality rendered null by two Hobbits and one mutation of a Hobbit, and his life rendered nil by a sorcerer and his sorceress. Slowly, Harry fell onto the hard, unforgiving ground of Mordor, his dragon's hide and mithril armour laid open by the brutal cuts of Sauron, armed with the Witch King's sword.

Rolling off Sauron's destroyed armour, Ceridwin found the sword in her hand was shattered. Not having time to celebrate the downfall of the darkness, she moved over to Harry, who lay face-down on the ground. His robe was rent down the length of his torso, blood soaking through and pooling on the ground. He was barely breathing. Cursing silently, she drew a knife from inside her own robe and quickly sliced through the fabric of his, pulling it off and throwing it aside.

His armour had been torn open at the back, cut with such ferocity that Angmar's sword was chipped, bent and blunted. Fingers trembling, she raced to undo the vambraces and rerebraces so she could lift the torn chainmail and dragonhide shirt off his torso and arms. When she had finally lifted his layers of armour, she found the wounds on his back and front to be terrible, cursed and deep. Swiftly slicing up his robe, Ceridwin bandaged the one on his front as it was the easiest to keep closed.

"Eowyn, Kingsfoil, Athelas!" she yelled as the young horsewoman finally made up the distance between them; "He is sorely wounded and treads the line between life and death!"

Ceridwin resumed trying to stabilise Harry, whose breaths came in ever-shorter gasps. The words that left her mouth were not shaped as any known on Middle Earth. It was a song of pain, of loss, of gain. Slowly she drew the curse left by Angmar's blade and reinforced thrice by Sauron from his flesh, accepting it upon herself.

As Eowyn rode off at a gallop in search of Athelas, Ceridwin continued her dirge, visible wisps of dark magic leaving the wounds and coming toward her when a second horse, one she didn't recognise, a bay Gondorian horse, approached. The rider slipped off, a sinister dark-haired man of slight build, long hair and a once-broken nose.

"Move aside." he instructed in hesitant Westron, evidently not his first language, kneeling next to Harry.

She was still drawing toward her the dark magic embedded in the wounds when the man muttered an incantation in no language she recognised and transformed a nearby rock into a rat and grabbed it before it could move. Suddenly, Ceridwin felt a tug and the fell magic was being pulled away, into the rat.

Unresisting, she watched the foreign magic at work as the dark magic was fully drawn from the wounds into the rat. Picking up her dagger, she quickly dispatched the rock-turned-rat making sure that the dark magic died with it. Even in such vermin, having the Morgul magic of Sauron and the Witch King around was worrisome. Thus dispatched by the dwarven blade, it could not do harm.

Gradually, Harry's breathing evened out as the two, working hard cleaned and closed the sword wounds. Ringil lay to one side, still clutched in their patient's hand. Though it took some time, she was relatively sure that Harry was stable, but then the man helping her heal him withdrew several vials from his long, black coat. Ceridwin's paranoia burned, she dived for Ringil, prising it from Harry's fingers, and a moment later, knelt with the tip of the sword at the man's throat.

"Put aside your poisons." she snarled.

"They are... not dangerous." he stuttered; "They heal, make blood recreate..?"

Slowly Ceridwin lowered the sword, nodding for him to administer them.

"Pray that if they do him harm, that you are dead before I can bring my wrath upon you." she warned.

"I do not wish him harm." the man assured her.

Eowyn rode up with the precious Kingsfoil in a leather pouch which she threw to Ceridwin from a distance.

"We must take him to Minas Tirith, the Halls of Healing." Eowyn stated, jumping from her horse.

"Give us time." Ceridwin replied.

Harry's vision slowly faded into being from the darkness to which it had succumbed, moments after Sauron was struck down, awakening to see a head of black hair laid on his chest, only a thin sheet of smooth cotton between them. Smiling faintly at the sleeping Ceridwin, he returned to unconsciousness once more.

She was still asleep when he next awoke, this time gently trying to slip out from under her. Then he suddenly felt lines of fresh scar tissue tense across his back and front. The dull ache that he'd first felt as he awoke vanished, replaced with untold agony and the chilling memory of the blade in Sauron's hand cutting through his armour. Harry slowly slumped against the head of the bed when Ceridwin began shaking.

"Eru... no, don't leave me Harry... not now, not after what we've been through together... stay with me!" she whispered.

For a moment, he was frozen, not realising that he had stepped so close to death itself. But then his emotions took over and, regardless of the pain, he pulled her up against him, stroking her hair as she relaxed against his shoulder. Harry found Ringil embedded in the door, looking like someone had thrown it with great strength, while the dagger he usually slept with under his pillow was beside the bed on a low table, with his staff leaning against the wall.

Slowly, and in some pain, he levered himself out from under his beloved. On his finger was a ring, not unlike Sauron's, but simply filled with his presence. He slid it onto one Ceridwin's fingers, so that she would still, subconsciously, feel him. Sighing, he summoned a simple black robe which he belted around his waist, placing the sheath for Ringil at his left hip and drawing the sword from the door and after pulling on a pair of his dragonhide boots, picked up his staff, leaning heavily on it as he exited.

Outside the healing halls, he found Winter and Moonlight stood in a small stable. Running a hand down the flanks of the two horses fondly, he saddled up Winter and, with a mounting block to aid his still-weak body, hoisted himself into the saddle. Before departing the stable, he gave Moonlight a light pat and a grin. If it hadn't been for two fantastic horses and a fantastic woman, he'd be long-dead.

Trotting quietly through the fading evening light as it slowly vanished from Minas Tirith, he made his way up to the seventh level, where the great hall and the White Tree of Gondor were. Dismounting as he approached the Citadel Guards, robed in velvet and wearing helmets with white swan wings, he passed Winter's reins to one of them, limping toward the great doors of the Citadel's Tower Hall.

The ever-present Citadel Guards stood on the inside slightly started as a deep pounding sound came from the doors. They pulled them open as Harry lowered his staff. He entered, still leaning heavily on the staff as he returned the bows of the door wardens before they shut the doors. He limped in, the beat of the staff against the marble ringing loudly with each blow of the staff upon the marble. Harry raised an eyebrow seeing Faramir lounging on the lower stairs of the high dais holding the thrones of the King and the Steward, his arm around Eowyn while Aragorn and Gandalf paced agitatedly.

"Lords, my lady. Your Majesty." Harry said weakly.

"Ah, Harry, we weren't expecting you." said Gandalf.

"Denethor?" asked Harry.

"Succumbed to the madness." Faramir said with a tired, sad smile.

He bowed his head in silence for a few moments before Aragorn entered the conversation.

"Since Sauron was destroyed we've pressed the advantage further. Pirates sailed up the river but we wiped them out before their boats could dock. The force Sauron had mustered a force south of Osgiliath was marching north as his spies saw you depart north, including their most powerful siege weaponry. A debt was owed by ones of great power to my line, I unleashed them upon the orcs, Haradrim and assorted servants. We simply await word of Frodo and Sam, as nothing has come from them since the destruction of the ring." he commented, descending from the dais; "And of you? I learnt your bore great injury in the name of freedom, and it seems you have yet to recover your full strength."

"Frodo and Sam will return to us when they can escape the inferno that flows from Mount Doom." Harry sighed, his hand clasping his staff as he muttered a prayer for the Hobbits; "My injury was less than that taken by many who have stood in the path of evil and I bear it without bitterness. Mayhap you could tell me how long it has been since Sauron fell?"

"Ten days, the Lady Ceridwin's healing saved many a life including yours I am told. She and a healer of a name I do not know have released hundreds of men back into the line of battle, our forces continue to grow in strength, driving the remainder of Sauron's forces into the mud with evermore ferocity." Faramir interjected.

"Sauron is gone. It is inevitable that the remains of his armies are driven into the darkest crevices of Middle Earth if they survive the scourge we wield upon them."Aragorn growled, before slumping slightly and sighing; "We still have fourteen-hundred years of damage to heal. Both physical and mental. Lothlorien is sending a legion of craftsmen to help repair the city and then the rest of the realm, and they will help heal the minds and bodies of Gondor and Rohan."

"Ah, but it is not the engineers or the craftsmen you await so eagerly." Harry smirked, still capable of great humour even in his tired, stooped state.

"And the Duns send ambassadors to us, those who made war upon us and were captured are currently at work repairing what can be done by unskilled labour." Aragorn continued, 'not hearing' Harry's comment.

"Alatar and Palandar were persuaded alongside Radagast to fight at Dale against the Easterlings, and triumphed with far less lost than we expected, especially with the enchanted defences and traps you laid upon the city." Gandalf added; "King Theoden and his riders still maraud across Mordor and the borders, destroying what little of Sauron's army that remains. The Dead People have been released from their oaths after they ravaged the Easterling armies which marched upon us, prompting the Easterlings to make diplomatic entreats to us."

"Excellent, excellent." Harry mused; "What about your coronation King Aragorn." he added, taking great pleasure in Aragorn's uncomfortable expression. "Indeed, you have done nothing with your title, have you."

"You try being king then!" exclaimed Aragorn; "It's so uncomfortable, I'm a soldier, a ranger, never a ruler, yet I've had the crown thrown at my feet with the orders to place it upon my brow."

"I've never been one to rule, too much paperwork and diplomatics, not much fun." Harry snorted; "But people need a leader, even with Sauron gone. Aside from the number of Uruks and Orcs you've killed, somebody else would have killed them, but what have you brought them? Hope! Leadership! A symbol to follow. Do not throw that in their faces, some men are destined to lead, some to follow, some like myself do neither, I do what I like. You're a leader, a ruler. As the morn comes in a few hours, let us ride through the city, let the people speak of and to you!"

"He is right." Faramir nodded.

"Indeed, I thank you Harry." said a musical voice as a feminine figure slipped through the doors.

"My lady." Harry bowed to Arwen, the woman who he was certain would become queen before turning to address Faramir, his voice ringing around the great marble and granite hall; "Shall we delay the ride through the city, as I doubt that we shall see Aragorn for some many hours yet."

Shooting him a glare, Arwen swept over, looking him up and down with piercing grey eyes, cast into a purple colour by the lighting of the Tower Hall;

"I do not believe your strength is sufficient to suffer such a parade through the city, you stand only by the strength of your hand upon your staff and little more." she stated.

"And yet I do still stand." Harry replied, somewhat short of a riposte; "I may have to return to the Halls of Healing yet but I could not rest without knowing where our war stood."

"I may not be a queen yet, but regard this as an order." Arwen said firmly; "Return to the Halls of Healing now, and leave only once you are truly strong enough."

"Indeed, the sentiment is admirable, but I believe you ought to take the Lady Arwen's order." another voice rang out.

They spun around to see Ceridwin forming from grey smoke in the centre of the entrance, causing the door wardens to start. She looked mildly annoyed to see Harry up and about, but all could see the relief on her face as he bowed to the king, nodded to the others and began to walk towards her. But even as he reached Ceridwin, his strength failed him and he barely remained standing as she caught him around the waist, half-carrying him to their horses.

A few days later, Harry had managed to eat and drink enough that his magic began to replenish itself, and though he wasn't fully healed, he had begun to regain his strength and mobility, slowly recovering from the terrible wounds inflicted upon him. He and Ceridwin were quietly brushing their horses in the stables when a powerful horn sang out over the Pelennor Fields and the city of Minas Tirith.

"You know, we no longer need to wear mail, plate and hide." Harry commented to Ceridwin as they both reached for mail hauberks that lay across a wooden beam in the stables.

She frowned for a moment before breaking out into a smile. With a single gesture, the armour was bundled into a chest and two dark-blue surcoats came flying from their quarters. As imposing as ever, the black they usually wore was somewhat lightened to a midnight blue, with baggy trousers and a pair of dragon hide boots each, their only concession to the past were their favoured black cloaks.

Before climbing into the saddle, Ceridwin pulled him into a kiss, once again assuring herself that he lived.

They had ridden out onto the streets just as Faramir, carrying the banner of Gondor with Eowyn riding alongside with Rohan's horse banner, led Aragorn with Arwen, followed by Gandalf came down the streets. Wheeling around, they rode alongside the horses of the future King and his future Queen.

"That's Theoden's horn." called Faramir.

"You go with us to greet them?" asked Aragorn.

"I would not miss it for the world if the two figures I spotted riding with Rohan's warriors are who I think." Harry replied.

Nodding to Ceridwin, they broke away from the group, tapping their heels into Winter and Moonlight's flanks. The two horses galloped down through the levels, racing down past the Gondorian soldiers who stood at every corner, sentinels bearing the scars of the hard-fought-for peace. At every corner, people came to cheer for them as he raced past them, a sight which made both smile slightly, that despite hundreds of years of constant fighting against the encroaching darkness of Mordor, that they still held life in them.

They continued the ride, circling down through the levels of the city to the gates which were flung open as the two jet black chargers' hoofbeats echoed against the cobblestones, becoming soft thuds as they rode out onto the grass of the Pelennor Fields, riding out to meet the army.

Racing across the fields, Harry, with Ceridwin beside him, easily crossed several miles to the massed cavalcade of horsemen. Circling in, he fell into a canter beside Theoden, his face breaking into a smile as he saw, each riding with a Rohirrim lancer, the two missing Hobbits, Frodo and Sam.

"Their ordeal was long and tiring, but we found them when the rocks of Doom cooled." Theoden called above the thunderous hoof-beats of several eoreds of cavalry; "I hope the warmth of the welcome of Minas Tirith has improved since Denethor's reign as his company was less than friendly.."

"Weary of the saddle already Theoden?" asked Harry; "You must be getting aged!"

"I would taunt you for being a young man were I not aware you are older than I." chuckled the king, gesturing for his bodyguard to speed up as they crossed the fields toward the specks that they identified as the Gondorian Royal Party. "Few are the years that you seem to have, yet many are they in experience."

Peace was upon them, yet it would not last long as pirates from Umbar sailed to wreak vengeance on the free countries of Middle Earth as they recovered from the war on Mordor. Harry, by then strong enough, led an army of two-hundred archers and his own soldiery to confront them.

Hoof-beats rang out around the Citadel Courtyard as two black chargers burst through the gates, their host of five-hundred men halting on the lower level. Striding into the Tower Hall, Harry and Ceridwin were somewhat bemused to see Gandalf talking to a man who could have been his brother, along with Faramir and Eowyn who were sat at a table talking with Aragorn and Arwen while a severe-looking woman and a dour looking man stood near the doors. Ceridwin's eyes narrowed at the last man, recognising him but having never had a moment to speak to him. She turned, looking at the elder before raising an eyebrow.

"I was unaware Gandalf had a brother." Ceridwin stated in Sindarin, the elf-tongue, to which Aragorn chuckled and Arwen smirked.

"Indeed." Harry rolled his eyes; "We encountered the corsair fleet on the coast. They had Haradrim archers on board to supplement their own."

"Oh, I thought the Haradrim had been dealt with." Aragorn frowned as he stood up and strode over, briefly embracing both Harry and Ceridwin.

"We set one ship, full of bodies, back to the lands occupied by the Umbars and one to the Haradrim as an example having killed all the on board and burnt every other enemy vessel there." Harry replied; "They were on the outbound so no cargo or slaves were aboard."

"I assumed you'd been burning something." interjected Faramir with a lazy smirk; "There's ash remnants and bleaching on your skin."

Harry simply waved his hand, cleaning the traces of ash from both his and Ceridwin's skin, though there was still slight bleaching from it.

"We intend to take a company of cavalry to Cirith Ungol, see what is to be done with the tower there and make sure that Shelob is dead, maybe collapse the tunnels." Ceridwin stated.

"Do we know yet why Sauron could take physical form? I was of the belief that until reunited with the ring that he could be no more than a fire-wraith." asked Faramir.

"Aye, I believe that because of its proximity to Mount Doom and Barad-dur that it allowed Sauron to temporarily take form. With our slightly infamous reputation, I expect he decided we were the biggest threat to his power, so with Ceridwin less than a mile away, he decided to try and remove us both." Harry replied, wincing at the phantom pain from the numerous broken bones he gained in the fight.

"However, what is to be done with these corsairs and the Haradrim?" asked Arwen.

"Personally, I'd colonise Tolfalas in the Bay of Belfalas, set up a fortress with long-range weaponry, catapults and ballistae... Send for the elven shipwrights and commission them to build ships capable of carrying a war party, archers, infantry to attack and board enemy ships, ballistae on the sides, bow and stern to sink them." said Harry; "But that would take months if not years to set up... The knights of Dol Amroth should be patrolling the coast, if we could pressure the other, neutral tribes of the Haradrim into pushing at Umbar's borders."

"Gather the nine warlords of the west, Aragorn, Theoden, Kings of Gondor and Rohan, Faramir, Prince of Ithilien, Eomer, Lord of the Mark, Imrahil, Prince of Dol Amroth, Harry as the Black Sorcerer and Protector of the Free, Gandalf for the Istari, Gimli, Lord of the Glittering Caves and Legolas, Prince of Mirkwood." said Ceridwin; "No nation would stand in defiance of the powers that felled Sauron massed together. If the nine warlords were gathered when Harad sends its ambassadors."

"Rebuild Osgiliath." suggested Gandalf, his voice ringing clear around the Tower Hall; "A fortress so close to the city on the Anduin, giving us a port where we can load and unload men and supplies. At the moment it is no more than a depressing ruin and a weakness. A weakness we cannot afford! Gondor lies at the end of a seemingly endless war, do not make us seem so ruined that every other nation on this Middle Earth feels it can destroy us."

"We're but months past the end of a swift and bloody war, consolidate our hold, and present a front that none would defy." Harry nodded; "And if that doesn't work, leading a few war-bands south and subduing the Haradrim tribe by tribe might. It's not something I'd like, but it's always a possibility."

"Last resort of course." Aragorn stated; "I don't want the Fourth Age to open in a wave of blood and conflict."

"Peace can only come at a price, often that of conflict." Arwen counselled.

"Indeed. However, I must beg you that we take our leave." said Ceridwin; "We have ridden long and hard, through dust and sand, night and day."

Aragorn rose and bowed to them, his fist clenched over his heart, 'allowing' them to leave his presence. Bowing back, the two burst into black clouds and streaked out of the Throne Room, completely passing through the doors.

"Forgive me sire, I know he has led our armies time and time again to victory, yet why do you allow him to dictate so much to you?" asked a genuinely curious Faramir.

"I trust Harry with my life, as I do Ceridwin." replied Aragorn; "But he is a far older, far more powerful man than many realise, half of what we know of him is myth, half is legend."

"The Black Knight is first recorded as coming forth before the Host of Valinor, a great warrior, fighting Morgoth's forces at the Dagor Bragollach, saving thousands to fight again when the Valar advanced upon those lands. When they came, he again took up arms and fought in the great battles of that time, and though it was long before I arrived in Middle Earth, those that saw him in battle tell of the most terrible wrath with which he cast down his enemies." said Gandalf, his strong voice echoing around the hall; "It is said that in his wrath, he smote the lands of Morgoth into the sea. Whether it is true or not, who can say? So few remain from that time and none speak of it. The Lady Ceridwin implied to me that his wrath is tempered by her presence and that is why we still have a Middle Earth that has not been blasted into the sea."

"What is known Lord Steward, is that on the plains of Dagorlad, he led a contingent against Sauron's armies, and fought at the Siege of Barad-dur and witnessed Sauron's first fall." interjected Arwen in her musical tone; "But in elven lore, there is much about someone similar in description to him, and if even what I've been told of this last war is true, I pray I never attract his wrath. Thousands of years of history he has seen and participated in, I would not pitch a thousand elvish warriors against him for every year he has lived and hope to win."

"I doubt that you will my lady, he is greatly fond of you and I heard him once call Aragorn a 'misbegotten twit who's too much of an utter imbecile to realise that love is stood in front of him waving her hand in his face and yet he still doubts'." Gandalf said, smirking, a very unusual expression on the Istar's face.

"I was having a bad day." Aragorn huffed as Arwen raised an eyebrow; "He pulled me out of my depression rather brutally before stomping said depression into the ground until it was nought but a smear in my memories."

"Harry has a tendency to have the subtlety of a battery of trebuchet when not tempered by his wife." chuckled the Istar; "My apologies Master Dumbledore, Master Snape, Lady McGonagall, I was intending on asking them to speak to you, but as you see they come and go as they want."

"You need not apologise my lord." stated Dumbledore, in a bit of shock at what he'd heard.

Harry stepped over a cut aimed at his legs and lunged towards Ceridwin, who batted aside his sword with a point-down parry, bringing her own sword around to cut at him from shoulder to hip. Harry simply stepped back and responded with a two-handed cut towards her head which his opponent blocked by the simple expedient of grabbing his wrist with her left hand and slashing her blade at his stomach.

Using his empty left hand, Harry drew a dagger and redirected her cut away from him while he pulled his wrist away from her grip. He suddenly reversed direction, pushing downward with his wrist as Ceridwin tried to pull his hand down, managing to wrench his sword-arm free.

She swung around, landing a powerful strike with her elbow in his stomach and cut downward from above her right shoulder with both hands, holding her sword vertically. Harry, winded, barely fended off her strike, the fight ending as he felt the point of a dagger pressed against his stomach as he held her sword off above his left shoulder with his own.

"I yield." Harry said, releasing his sword, having sheathed his dagger. It clattered onto the stones, and Ceridwin, smirking, sheathed her own weapons. That was when he grabbed her, throwing them both over, laughing.

They sprang up upon hearing gentle clapping on the terrace set a few steps above the lawn on which they'd been duelling. The two bearded men, Gandalf and the one they did not know, were stood watching them.

"An excellent display." commented Gandalf.

"Thank-you Olorin." said Ceridwin.

"Let us walk." Gandalf instructed, the other man silently following. "What do you wish to do now that Sauron is vanquished, his armies ruined and his fortresses slighted?"

Harry and Ceridwin exchanged glanced before the latter replied;

"We have spoken about it, we considered returning to the Undying Lands, yet it has been nigh seven-thousand turns of the sun around this Middle Earth that we have lived here, at least for me, longer for Harry. Walking amongst men, dwarves, elves and creatures of ill. At the same time, oft we have fought here, but few have been the places to call home. Living amidst the grandeur of Gondor, the warm simpleness of the halls of the Horse Lords of Rohan, the great stony cavern halls of the dwarves, the quiet, beautiful calm of the elven lands, even amidst the eagles, yet few could we call home. And amongst the Valar, there are one or two for whom we hold no love." Ceridwin said sadly.

"Soon is the day we leave these shores Olorin, it is not a fact I can state, yet it is one I am certain of, from my bones and my heart I feel it." replied Harry; "An era comes to a close, it is time for mankind to live as it should, a flawed but great peoples, to rule and be ruled. The days where elves and deities are their guides and rulers shall be gone ere long. Tell me you do not feel it Olorin and I should wonder if your appearance as an old man effects your mind."

"And yours the impudence of youth belying the age and wisdom with which it comes." Gandalf replied.

"Indeed. I find it freeing as with age comes the expectation of responsibility and diplomacy, at neither do I excel." chuckled Harry; "Thus I have never changed my form. Though, my old friend, I doubt you have come to pester us for acting the age we pretend to be."

"No, I come on behalf of my new acquaintance." said Gandalf, gesturing to the as-yet silent man; "This is Albus Dumbledore, and he came to me some time ago bearing a fanciful tale of crossing universes, and your past, such fancy that I believe it, as no lie could truly be quite as extravagant."

"I have little doubt that he speaks anything but the truth." Harry allowed; "Few are those who know anything of me, and fewer know anything beyond what is embedded in myth and legend, even you Olorin. Those few are a handful of the Eldar, Ceridwin and a few amongst the Valar. We must remember that oft, it is the more fanciful a tale which bears the greater truth, for have we not heard tales which encourage disbelief, yet are found to be true? Did not Saruman dismiss the rise of the accursed Sauron as fanciful tales and paranoia?"

"A true liar rarely likes extravagance for detail is difficult to create in the mind. Master Dumbledore tells me that he has a method to return you to the world from whence you came, though he informs me there are those who are ill-disposed toward you." nodded Gandalf.

"Take care, do not decide in haste." added Ceridwin; "For even the wisest amongst men, elves and the ranks of the Maiar and Valar cannot see all ends."

Harry affectionately wrapped an arm around her shoulders.

"Should I make an ill-choice, I may rely on the certainty of you making my mistake known to me." he replied; "But take heed, there are those few who I would not leave behind."

"Excuse us, late is the hour and we would discuss your offer." said Ceridwin and the two bowed before striding away, Harry still with an arm wrapped around her.

Reaching for her forehead, Harry gently brushed Ceridwin's hair from where it was pasted to her skin by the sweat of their union, gazing on his wife. For moments, she had taken on a most beautiful and terrible form before returning to her form alike to a mortal. A woman of pure fire.

Fifteen-hundred years into the Age of the Trees, when Melkor had sought dominion over all of Middle Earth, having destroyed the two trees of Valinor, the sun and the moon had been brought to their stations by two of the Maiar, the male Tilion and the female Arien.

For a whole age, Tilion and Arien had carried the moon and the sun to their stations before the deep magic of Arda took hold and released them from their duties as Eru Illuvitar awoke his creations on Middle Earth. The sun-bearer, Arien, was of a form which the eyes of the Eldar and Men, could not be seen without descending into insanity or being struck dumb. Only a lover could see her true form without suffering thus. Only Harry could see her true form.

"Meldanya Ceridwin Arien Potter." he whispered, stroking her hair.

"I love you too." replied Ceridwin, curling into his side, nearly purring with contentment.

"What do you think of the offer tall-and-bearded gave us?" asked Harry eventually.

"Maybe it truly is time to move on. The Valar have all but forgotten Middle Earth, it is time for man to take care of his own lands, we are no longer needed." she replied.

"Severus, what are you doing?" asked Dumbledore, exiting the bedroom he used to find the living room of their quarters stacked with books and parchment covered in the Potions Master's scribbles.

"Albus, we are guests of an immensely powerful group of people, magically and politically. Do you not think I would not try and learn as much as I can to avoid offending one of the many residents of this city who carry swords? Do you even stop to think about this or do you just charge headlong into a situation?" Snape said acidly, raking around for a map he'd found.

"Well, what have you found dear boy?" asked Dumbledore, getting a hateful glare from Snape.

"For instance the land we are in now is Gondor, right on the eastern end of the Ered Nimrais, the White Mountains. This country follows the line of these mountains along the north, going right down to the sea in the west and the south, while it extends east to the Ephel Duath, the Mountains of Shadow which ring Mordor along with Ered Lithui, the Ash Mountains down to the River Poros which borders the deserts of Harad. The language they speak is Westron and is fairly similar to Middle English." Snape rattled off; "North of the Ered Nimrais is the land of Calenardhon, known as Rohan as it is occupied by the Rohirrim whose cavalry we have seen fighting with the Gondorians, who speak both their Westron and their own language, Rohirric which is broadly comparable to Anglo-Saxon."

"And what have you learnt beyond geography, what about the people? Their titles, what they mean." asked Minerva McGonagall, entering from outside.

"Aha, now we're living as guests of Aragorn II Elessar, he is the second of his line of descent with the name Aragorn, as for Elessar, I'm not sure. As we witnessed, he married to the elven princess Arwen and bears the title King of Gondor and Arnor, the latter of which is an abandoned realm of great size to the northwest of Rohan. To the south west of it is the unclaimed Eriador, a wilderness occupied by the elves and wild men alone." Snape continued; "Returning to titles, Gandalf, Mithrandir, Olorin, all names I have heard used to address the White Wizard, I cannot say why he has those, but only guess that they are from different cultures. He is the leader of the wizards of these land, the Istari, who are four in number, once five, each given colours. We witnessed the downfall of the previous White Wizard, Saruman. The others are Radagast, Allatar and Pallando, yet despite their displays of magic, the two Potters are not of these Istari."

"Severus, I worry that you're beginning to even speak like these people." stated Dumbledore, earning two glares telling him to shut up.

"As I was saying, the Istar are four in number. Then we have the elven communities who prefer to stay within themselves, though we have seen some of the most powerful. Galadriel, Lady of the forest of Lothlorien and de-facto ruler of the elves alongside her husband Celeborn though neither uses a royal title. The others are only mentioned as places such as Mirkwood." noted Snape, putting down the map and rifling through his notes; "Rohan is ruled by Theoden son of Thengel, lord of a nation of plainsmen who rear the finest horses and are noted as 'Fierce Horse Lords' for their skill. To our northwest beyond Mordor is Rhovanion, not ruled by any one being but there are several communities, Dale, a human city ruled by Brand of Dale, and beyond it is the mountain realm of Erebor, a dwarven fortress ruled by Dain II Ironfoot."

He paused, grabbing a flask of wine from the table and pouring a good portion into a goblet before taking a sip.

"If I am right, for every year in our world Dumbledore, and it has been seven years, approximately a thousand pass here if Potter has truly been here for seven-thousand years. Thus for every day we remain here, a thousandth of a day passes in our world, so we have little in the way of a deadline, so I study." stated Snape, sitting down on a high-backed chair; "I am in a land full of the wise, of great scholars. Do not expect me to linger here without making use of this... resource. Once I was seduced by knowledge without wisdom. Now I seek wisdom so that I may understand and use knowledge."

"Indeed, you may be right. We are, after all, amongst fascinating peoples, who are, many of them, highly skilled and knowledgeable in their chosen fields." Dumbledore admitted. "The magic in the air here is so thick that it is almost stifling, and any being, magical or not, with sufficient learning and mental control can wield it."

"It is expected of every noble to carry a sword, and every scholar to carry something like a dagger." Snape added; "And while the steel forged in this city is of good quality, the craftsmen from whom the greatest among the nobles get their weapons are the elves and the dwarves who have quite unique but great skill with crafting of weapons."

"We ought to acquire such then." said McGonagall.

They were interrupted by a sharp knocking on the door.

"Enter!" barked Snape.

The door opened to admit a Gondorian soldier in the plate armour typical of the city guard.

"Masters Dumbledore and Snape, Lady McGonagall, my Lord Gandalf asks that you join him to break your fasts." said the guard, unfazed by the chaos of parchments strewn around the room.

"Indeed. If you would escort us to wherever he dines..." Dumbledore requested.

Harry finished dicing an apple with a razor-sharp dagger, barely paying attention as he and Ceridwin, sat silent, half-listening to the discussion held between the three wizards and the Istar, and half silently conversing through facial expressions.

"We'll do it." she suddenly announced.

"Sorry?" said Dumbledore, confused by the sudden comment.

"Though we have things we must do before leaving this world, we will go to yours." Harry stated.

"Wonderful! I would say we had no time to loose, but it seems we have plenty." beamed Dumbledore.

I'm glad to have got out a flurry of updates in the last fortnight, and I apologise that it has taken so long. This is a whopper that I've rewritten completely a FOURTH time. It is my first attempt at a LOTR story, so CONSTRUCTIVE criticism is welcome. If you see any grammar, spelling or punctuation missed in this, please tell me.

To those complaining that all my stories are weapons porn, well you can say that. I'm tempted to write one even worse than all the others to spite you, and to mock the timetravel stories, and send Harry back to ~1900 to fix everything that went wrong in 20th century British military history. But it would take too much effort.

Will I write a second arc of this story in the HP-verse... possibly. I don't know when, or whether it'll be any good. I might give it a go some time.

Yours, ElMarquis