“Beats me,” shrugs Harry. “Though in my experience when people say stuff like that it’s usually best to take them at their word.” He looks around the basement at the dead demon monsters. “A renegade Denarian huh? Not sure I really believed it up until now. What do you suppose his Fallen’s beef is with the others?” 

“I am not sure,” says Michael, looking around on the ground for the third coin. “The Church’s records do confirm that Meciel has repeatedly been in conflict with other Denarians, but the original cause pre-dates our earliest information. Certainly she has never offered to team up with a Knight before. Maybe we can ask when he wakes up.” 

He looks over at Harry. “You should go upstairs, do your private eye routine, see if they kept any records here or if there’s other useful information to be found. I’ll track down wherever this coin rolled off to and get Melkor back to the car. If there really is someone coming for him then we shouldn’t take too long.”

Fifteen minutes later, Harry jogs up to the Blue Beetle, just as Michael is laying Melkor’s limp body out in the back seat. Michael looks up at him, face grim. “Bad news,” he says,” as they slide into their seats and Harry starts the car. “I couldn’t find the coin anywhere. I knew that they had some ability to influence themselves towards being picked up, but this is the first time I’ve ever watched one drop to the ground and then not been able to find it.”

“That’s some real one ring to rule them all bullshit,” Harry says. “Hopefully it at least had to wedge itself somewhere so weird that it’ll be years and years before anyone picks it up again.”

“One can hope,” replies Michael. 

Riding against whipping wind along glass smooth paths at speeds even golden-hooved Nahar would be pressed to attain, the Huntsman traverses the wilds that lie between Chicago and the Enemy’s latest spoor.

Fun isn't something one considers when hunting down a dark god. But this... does put a smile on my face.

Plodding mortal vehicles are easily routed around. An upcoming many-wheeled cargo carrier is slower than most, and Oromë leans left and spurs on his mount.

This puts him head on with a rounded blue thing whose rust and two occupants are familiar sights. More power, more speed, and the truck to his right fades back.

“Hail!” he shouts from within the full gray helm, and leans right to return to the customary lane.

“Freakin’ motorcycles,” Harry mutters, braking to keep himself well away from the aggressive passer.

Oromë dismounts his steed at a lakehouse where death and chaos have recently visited.

He takes in the scene, stalking the perimeter, entering the main floor, surveying the damage.

The Black Foe was here, in the full flowing of his wrath. So too were the knight (bootprints) and the wizard (scorch marks from lancing flames). Having somehow survived, those two would surely have a tale to tell.

In the basement, behind the metal grate of an air vent, a glint catches the Huntsman’s keen eye.

Wink

Oromë levers the grate out of the wall and lies down to gain a proper vantage.

The blackened denarius? But judging by the First Enemy’s visual message, he lost and reclaimed this coin two nights prior.

He picks it up and examines it in detail and in depth.

“Not exactly, O Host.” A voice chuckles warmly and a woman’s form swirls into existence before him, walking out of the shadows of the basement. “This is not the blackened denarius that your Enemy carries, but a blackened denarius.”

“I am Naamah.”

If he examines the coin in his hand, he will find that it looks very old; the face of a crowned woman on one side is half worn away and the edges are thinned and nicked. On the other side is a sigil whose meaning he does not know. It is crafted of true unalloyed silver, though much of it is covered in a sooty patina.

A set of minor artifacts, possessed by shades… did not The Corruptor sing of such things in the time before?

”Four things manifest from shadow: illusions, ghosts, tricks, and lies. Point me to something I can lay my hand on, shade.”

Oromë turns the elder coin between his fingers. “Or there are depths to which I can consign you whose infinitude is beyond your imagining.”

She bows her head. “Wise words, and yet perhaps not wise to the ways of this world, Hunter from Outside.” She gestures and a clear glass sphere forms in her hand, which she throws to him. “For illusions can be laid hands upon…” She gestures and a scene appears inside the globe of Morgoth Bauglir standing in this very basement, other figures seen faintly behind him. “…and may also illuminate truth, and not lies.”

“Then it is as Manwë foretold,” he says, staring into the sphere. “With each provocation, the Enemy grows more brazen.”

Oromë looks Naamah in the eye. “You would aid my pursuit of this monstrosity. For vengeance alone? Or have you an end upon this earth to which you would see me turn my powers?”

“Vengeance is a sufficient aim to garner my aid,” Naamah replies. “The spirit within the coin he carries is an enemy of mine. But,” she smiles at him, just a little bit temptingly, “I think we could perhaps work together, even past the immediate synergy, to great mutual benefit.”

Oromë looks between her and the coin, weighing. He nods. “It’s a foolish hunter who tracks a game hare but ignores the wild hawk.”

Outside, he straddles his mount and triggers its ignition. The coin rests within his quiver. Upon his return to Chicago, the coin — and the knight, and the wizard — will lead him to his quarry.

Naamah manifests a helmet and riding leathers of all white, and mounts up behind him, wrapping her arms around his waist while managing to rather gracefully keep clear of all his weapons.

Dark and tumultuous nighttime. Gray oaks containing their own seeds. Broken swords reforging, going molten, turn to ore and rock. A bunch of huge clocks spinning around for some reason.

Realities forking and splintering and seceding left, right, and center. A world where men were only half as tall and spent all their time eating and drinking and walking about the countryside. A world where Melkor swayed the other Valar from the beginning and reigned unopposed. A world where Fëanor crafted the deathly hallows and stuffed Mandos into a hall closet.

And what have we here? Slavering purple-black hounds tearing at a carcass, many-limbed sea fiends snapping a body into pieces, massive armored beetles grinding a corpse between their horns.

Oh. I’m back in the void, but I went insane.

That’s not so bad.

Melkor floats within a roiling rainbow-black nothingness, riding the waves as they come. The waves get higher, he gets higher. Easy peasy. But the void is bothered, irritated, disgusted. It sucks him with irresistible force into one cheek and spits him right out. Melkor’s head rings with a pitoong! as he hits the rusty blue spittoon at the end of the line.

Melkor catapults up to sitting and slaps his hands to his cheeks in shock.

“Whaugh?!” he coughs out.

He is lying on a couch with faded orange plaid upholstery, in front of a cozy fire. The room is dark, with stone walls and floors, all covered in thick cozy mismatched textiles. An enormous grey cat is lying across his legs, staring at him. Harry and Michael are sitting in mismatched squashy armchairs on either side of him, talking quietly. Michael is holding his sword, sheathed, across his lap.

“Easy there,” Harry says. “You’ve been out for a while. We brought you back to my place since it has better wards and you said someone might be after you right before you collapsed. How are you feeling?”

“Fiiine?”

Melkor throws up onto a cozy mismatched textile on the floor.

Harry sighs and gets out some stuff to clean up with. Also a bowl, which he leaves next to Melkor.

Meciel walks out of the shadows and sits in the chair Harry just vacated. “I’m glad you’re awake, but you should know that you’re not particularly fine. The mortal body that was materialized when you brought us out of the Void isn’t built to withstand your native magic - you lost maybe twenty percent of your bone mass and you’re going to feel like you have a moonshine hangover for a day or two.” She looks at him very seriously. “I should be able to heal all of the damage, eventually, but you need to be careful - if you keep doing this your body will give out, and I’m not sure what will happen to you then.”