Chapter Twelve: The Man In Black

As one, the three girls dropped their Enchanted Backpacks to the glowing marble floor.

“Who are you?” Katholas asked, stalling for time as she desperately tried to think of a way out of this.

The man in black cackled coldly.  “Are you certain you want to know?”

“Actually, no,” Camli muttered under her breath.

Anagorn elbowed the dwarf-girl in the ribs.  “Tell us who you are.”

“Or what?” the man in black asked condescendingly.

With a distinctive noise that sounded as if it belonged to a full-length sword, Anagorn’s butter knife rang from its sheath.  A flush tinged the girl’s cheeks as she realized how pathetic she must look, threatening a man with a butter knife.

Almost immediately, Katholas and Camli stepped forward to flank their friend.  Darkrím and Exaria flashed in the light from the Mirror as their wielders drew them.

The man in black laughed again, coldly this time.  “You wish to know who you face?  Very well.”  Dramatically, the man pushed the hood back from his face.

The girls spoke with one voice yet again.  “Tolkien?”

“NO!” the man cried.  “Everybody says that!  They all know him, but nobody knows me.  Nobody cares about me.  Just because he wrote some stupid book about a mystical world, he became famous and loved and they made movies about his book.  But nobody cared about me.”  He seemed on the verge of frustrated tears.

“Who are you?” Camli asked again, now very curious.

The man in black drew himself up to his full height.  “I am R. R. J. Tolkeen, Tolkien’s evil twin!”

Cheezy bad-guy music played.

“Just what the world needs,” Camli muttered.  “Another Mini-Balrog.”

“Of course, he’s an actual person, not a typo.  I don’t know if that would qualify as creating a Mini-Balrog or not, since they’re created by misspellings…” Katholas mused.

“True, but still…”

While elf and dwarf debated, Tolkeen continued to rant.  “After Peter Jackson decided to make the movie of my good twin’s book, I knew I had to do something.  So, I bided my time and let them create their precious movie; then I made my move.  It’s no good to them now that I’ve twisted it beyond recognition.  Now his creation has become my creation – Middle Aerth.”

Suddenly, Tolkeen whirled on the three girls.  “And everything was going perfectly until you three had to stick your noses in where they aren’t wanted.  I’m just going to have to take you back out of the picture.”

“You’re too late!” Anagorn cried.  “We finished the movie.  It’s all coming back together now.”

“Wrong!” Tolkeen cried.  “You may have finished the movie and let it run its course, but you’ve created a new movie – a movie that’s all mine!”

“Oh, no…” Camli groaned, having finally finished her debate with Katholas over the mini-Balrogs.

“Not if we can destroy you.”  Anagorn’s voice was hard and her eyes flashed with anger.

“You don’t have a chance,” Tolkeen retorted.  “Your precious Backpacks are empty.  The three of you have never been in anything more serious than a catfight.  I’m going to squash you like bugs.”

“Gee, that’s original,” Katholas taunted.

“You mock me?”  Tolkeen seemed genuinely shocked.

“Yep,” Katholas replied, outwardly calm.

With a growl, Tolkeen reached into his robe and drew a massive blade from a hidden scabbard.

“The sword of the Witch-King!” Camli breathed in sudden terror.

“You’ve messed up my plans for the first – and last – time!”  Tolkeen whipped the great sword over his head and charged the trio.

Instantly, the reflexes that had kept the girls alive through every previous fight scene kicked in, and they sprang apart.  Communicating as only good friends can through only eye contact and near-invisible body signals, the teenaged warriors set up their attack.

Tolkeen was rather annoyed when the three girls moved to flank him, forming a triangle around him.  He could only keep two in his sight at once, leaving the third free to attack.

Reason and common sense fled.  All memory of why they did what they did fled.  The slight shreds of sanity that still remained after the past few hours fled.   Most importantly of all, fear fled.  All that remained was instinct – instinct that none of the girls had possessed before that moment – and a determination to save the movie they loved.

Anagorn’s hands somehow remained steady as she clutched Lisran’s hilt and blocked swing after swing of the Witch-King’s great sword.  Despite the significantly shorter reach of the butter knife, she managed to slip through Tolkeen’s guard and slid the blade along his jaw.

Katholas would have sworn under oath that Anagorn no longer held Lisran, but the great sword Andúril in her hands.  The elf-girl could not pause in her own efforts to look straight at her friend, but she knew Andúril’s blade when she saw it, even out of the corner of her eye, and she saw it slice across Tolkeen’s jaw, leaving a thin cut.  As for herself, she felt pitiful defending herself with a spoon, but was determined not to back down.  And so she swung Darkrím as fast and as hard as she could, rejoicing inwardly when she scored a slight hit on the man in black’s shoulder.

Camli could not believe what she was seeing in her peripheral vision.  Though she couldn’t turn to look fully at Katholas, what she saw from the corner of her eye told her that a long elven knife twirled and twisted in Katholas’ hand.  The dwarf-girl had too much else to focus on to give Katholas’ weapon much thought, however.  She was far too busy slicing with Exaria and attempting to ignore the fact that she was fighting with a fork.  Still, the fork was holding up well – she had deflected a full swing from the Witch-King’s sword across its length and the fork had not even been scratched.

Anagorn blinked as, out of the corner of her eye, she saw Camli catch Tolkeen’s sword across the top of what appeared to be a full-length, double bladed axe such as the one Gimli carried.  Impossible, she told herself.  But she was too occupied with blocking to give much attention to the other two, and would have forgotten about the weapon were it not for the silver flashes in the corners of both eyes that were far too long to be silverware.

And then it happened.  Somehow, Camli got Exaria behind Tolkeen’s legs just as Anagorn’s Lisran blocked a blow and sent the man a pace backwards.  As he tripped, Katholas hooked Darkrím around his blade and sent it flying across the Mirror.

Tolkeen hit the ground hard and looked up to see three sharp blades at his throat.

“Restore the movie or else,” Anagorn commanded.

With the weapons hovering just above his pulse, Tolkeen had little choice.  “You’ll have to let me up,” he said sullenly.

The girls stepped back and allowed him to gain his feet, but kept their silverware ready.

With a sigh, Tolkeen reached inside his robe and pulled out a CD.  Placing it on the ground, he said, “Stand back.”

The girls stepped back a pace, still ready for anything.

With a whoosh, a whirlwind rose from the center of the CD.  With a rush, it filled the entire Mirror and shot out beyond what the girls could see.  What they could see, however, was the figure of Tolkeen snatching up the sword of the Witch-King and riding his whirlwind up and out of the Mirror.

Katholas could just make out his shouted words – “This isn’t over yet!”

And then blackness crashed over all three minds and the three Wielders of the Enchanted Silverware collapsed to the floor, unconscious.

 

 

 

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