“I can’t,” she replied. “Lúthien was only able to enchant him once, on their way in.”
“Then how are we going to get past that thing?”
“With a little help from a friend,” Art3mis replied. “There’s only one creature who can put Carcharoth out of his misery…”
She removed a small glass figurine from her inventory. It looked like a large dog with shaggy white hair. I realized that it must be another Figurine of Wondrous Power, like the ones I possessed of Shadowfax and Felaróf. But I’d never seen one in the form of a dog before.
Art3mis set the figurine on the ground in front of us. Then she put two fingers in her mouth and let out a long, shrill whistle, before shouting, “Huan!”
The figurine began to grow and morph into an enormous Irish wolfhound with a coat of long white hair. He was the size of a small horse. The wolfhound bowed his head to Art3mis, then sniffed the air and turned around. When he spotted Carcharoth, he immediately bared his razor-sharp teeth.
Art3mis leaned over and whispered something in Sindarin to Huan, and he bounded forward and lunged at Carcharoth, snapping his mighty jaw closed around the wolf’s neck. The impact knocked Carcharoth aside, clearing our path to the exit.
Art3mis and I ran forward while the wolfhound distracted the wolf long enough for us to escape through the open gates.
As soon as I crossed the threshold and emerged from the dark fortress of Angband, the Silmaril in my right hand transformed into the Sixth Shard—and another flashback began.
* * *
For the first second or two, I couldn’t see anything. Then someone removed the blindfold I was wearing, and I found myself staring at the waterfalls of Rivendell, with a familiar-looking mansion nestled among them. Og was showing Kira the house he’d constructed for her for the very first time. The place where they would spend the rest of their lives together.
Kira turned a full circle, and I could feel her heart pounding as she took in her beautiful surroundings. Then she looked into her husband’s eyes and said, “Oh, Og—I never want to leave.”
* * *
Then it was over, and I found myself back on Arda, standing next to Art3mis outside the Gates of Angband, clutching the Sixth Shard in my right hand. I glanced down at it. There was an ornate, calligraphic letter L etched into its crystalline surface. I immediately recognized it as Leucosia’s character symbol—the one that had adorned her Dungeons & Dragons character sheet. I’d seen that same letter L in Kira’s notebook, in her illustration of the Shrine of Leucosia. Her character symbol was etched into the stone altar’s surface, and it matched the symbol etched into the Sixth Shard exactly.
I pinpointed the shrine’s location on Chthonia in my OASIS atlas, and attempted to teleport us both there. But I couldn’t. We weren’t in a designated departure zone.
Suddenly, thunder rumbled from the gray sky overhead, and bolts of red lightning began to arc upward from the ground around us as the earth itself began to shake. What sounded like a series of explosions boomed from above, and we both looked up to see fire and smoke erupting from the three volcanic peaks of Thangorodrim. A moment later, a hail of flaming rock and molten metal began to rain down on the landscape below.
“Angband is awakened!” Art3mis shouted, pulling me away from the gate. I could already hear all sorts of foul creatures screaming and roaring and growling as they made their way to the surface. Morgoth’s minions began to pour out of the secret gate behind us. And we could hear even more of them approaching the main gate directly ahead of us. We were trapped in the middle of two dark armies, both of which were rapidly closing in on us.
There didn’t appear to be any way for us to escape. When I turned to Art3mis for guidance, she pointed toward the sky.
A pair of giant eagles were descending toward us, with their claws out. But Art3mis didn’t move, so neither did I, and a split second later, the eagles scooped both of us up and spirited us away.
Once we were safe and soaring high above in the clouds, we climbed up onto their backs and Art3mis introduced me to our new friends. She was riding on Gwaihir and I was astride Landroval.
“These are the eagles who rescued Beren and Lúthien when they were fleeing Angband,” Art3mis said. Then she pointed toward the three volcanic peaks that still loomed behind us, spitting fire and lightning into the darkening sky. “The Great Eagles used to roost back there, on the peaks of Thangorodrim. But now their eyrie is in the Crissaegrim mountain range in southern Echoriath.”