Bella didn't stop to rest. She followed the dying ripple of spatial displacement and gave chase.
The Balrog's vitality was extraordinary—even bisected, the creature clung stubbornly to life.
It took two consecutive teleports before she caught up with it at the edge of a dense forest.
Glamdring drove in, again and again. Her psionic reserves were sluggish after the two temporal acceleration spells, so she fell back on the sword—stabbing into the Balrog's skull, hearts, and torso in methodical succession.
When the last flame on its body finally went dark, Bella pried out the flame core from between the three hearts. Its value was comparable to the Ring of Fire itself. She pocketed the core carefully, then sank to the ground beside the body, breathing hard.
The forced use of two temporal spells had wrecked her. She leaned against a tree, resting the tip of her sword on the earth, and closed her eyes.
…
Three, maybe five minutes passed before hoofbeats reached her—distant at first, then rapidly closing. She forced her eyes open.
A female Elf was riding a white horse at the forest's edge. She'd detected the anomalous magical residue and spatial disturbance in the area and come at a gallop. She rode barefoot, a long Elven blade gripped tightly in hand.
That is a long face… Bella suppressed her headache and, mustering what composure she could, addressed the Elf in Elvish: "Greetings, daughter of the forest. I've had rather a difficult fight with that large fellow over there, and I've lost my bearings entirely. Could you tell me where I am?"
The long-faced Elf looked at the Balrog's cold corpse, then at the Elven longsword in Bella's hand, and at the ash residue still clinging to the blade.
"Are you from Rohan?" she asked.
Rohan? Bella shook her head on instinct. "I'm not. Is this Rohan? Have I come that far?"
Whether it was her fluent Elvish or simply respect for someone who had just killed a Balrog, the Elf answered soberly: "This is Lothlórien. Rohan lies more than a month's journey to the south."
Lothlórien. The Golden Wood. Bella frowned slightly. She had no desire to deal with the Elves here—not now. They were far less welcoming than she'd imagined, and she was currently injured, carrying an Elven sword and wearing one of the Three Rings on her hand. This was precisely the kind of encounter that could go sideways very fast.
"Thank you for telling me—" Bella glanced at the Elf's black hair—"Noldorin daughter of the forest. I'll take my leave as quickly as I can. Could you hold off on notifying your kin for a little while?"
"She has already done so, traveler." A voice entered Bella's mind—flowing like water, still like a deep lake. "Bearer of Narya, you are welcome in Lothlórien."
Found me anyway.
That quality of mental perception belonged to exactly one person—or rather, one Elf. Galadriel. The most powerful Elf on the continent.
"Ha—" Bella gave a candid laugh. She couldn't refuse. There was no point in refusing.
"I accept the invitation with gratitude. The honor is mine, my lady."
She raised her left hand. On her middle finger, Narya—the Ring of Fire—pulsed with a deep crimson light.
The Elf on horseback was startled, blade leveled instinctively in a guarding stance. Then she saw the shape of the ring clearly, and drew a sharp breath.
Deep within the forest, a ripple of water-blue light rose, as if two rings were answering each other across the distance.
The Elf listened, nodding several times, then let out a short whistle. A white horse emerged from the treeline.
Bella mounted, and followed the Elf deeper into the wood.
The honor guard of Elven soldiers she'd been half-expecting never appeared. The Elf led her through a maze of turns through the forest—until Bella had lost all sense of direction—and then both horses stopped.
They climbed a spiral staircase up the interior of an enormous tree. Through the canopy above, starlight filtered down in scattered points. Fireflies drifted among the upper branches.
Bella estimated she'd climbed the height of at least ten stories. Then, guided by the subtle resonance between the two Elven rings, she looked up.
Galadriel, Lady of Lothlórien—bearer of Nenya, the Ring of Water—stood waiting beside a still pool, watching them approach.
She was tall, by any measure: six chi four cun by local reckoning—a full 2.1 meters (6'11") tall. A height like that would seem extreme on a man; on a woman it was something else entirely.
But height wasn't what made her presence what it was. It was the quality that surrounded her.
Bella followed the Elf's lead and walked toward her. With every step closer, her confusion deepened. What level of being was this?
The Ancient One was powerful, supremely composed—but she read as human. You could feel it.
Galadriel didn't read as anything Bella could place. Not the violent, volatile divine fury of the sea goddess. Not a mortal. A demigod, perhaps?
People felt joy and sorrow and rage. So did divine beings. But Galadriel showed nothing of the negative. She seemed to be virtue and wisdom crystallized into a single form.
Was she simply born this way, and as her level of existence rose, it magnified what was already there?
Bella had met few divine or semi-divine beings. She had no real framework for this. Vaguely, she thought of someone—Galadriel reminded her of the White Witch, the figure the Ancient One had once separated from herself. But where the White Witch was composed entirely of negative emotion, Galadriel felt like a being that someone had deliberately distilled into pure benevolence.
"Arwen, my dear," Galadriel said, her voice unhurried, "our guest is very tired. Take her to rest first." There were no hidden signals, no invitations to a private conversation forced on an exhausted traveler. She simply looked at Bella with clear, quiet eyes—took in the state of her at a glance—and turned to leave.
Bella was grateful. She made polite conversation with the Elf named Arwen for a few exchanges—all those remarks about starlight and running water washed right over her—and then she was in an Elven tree-house, and asleep.
The next morning, the lake of her mind had settled with sleep, and the headache was gone. The tree-house was far removed from the other Elven dwellings. She washed up at the spring beside it, and Arwen brought her a robe—long, elegant, distinctly Elven in cut, the color of moonlight.
"Ha. So I'm the White Robe now, am I?" Bella murmured. "An interesting development. Is this fate's way of giving me a reward?"
Arwen didn't follow the reference. Bella didn't explain—just smiled at herself, then peeled off the Kamar-Taj robes stained with blood and ash, and put on the Elven moon-white robe.
It wasn't the floor-length style Galadriel favored, the kind where the hem dragged half a meter behind. The cut was closer to her old robes—just long enough to brush the tops of her feet. The fabric was embroidered all over with stars and intricate patterns; the sleeves were delicately latticed at the forearm, and the collar sat low, leaving her collarbone and throat bare.
Feeling adequately rested, Bella decided it was time to say her goodbyes and return to Thorin and the others.