The sudden lash of tentacles from the depths of Mirrormere caught everyone unawares.
They were a sickly, glowing green, jointed like fingers along their length. Each one wielded dreadful strength, strong enough to flip great boulders aside and, in a single sweep, snatch up a dozen mail-clad warriors and drag them down toward the dark floor of the lake.
"Monster!"
"There is a monster in the lake!"
"Curse it, what is that thing, some sea-spawned giant octopus?"
The soldiers tried at once to fall back, but the tentacles moved as if they had eyes, whipping after them and refusing to relent.
At this sight Reger, Andric, and Yenagath surged to the fore.
"Ha!"
Andric leaped high, raising his battle-axe with both hands. With all his strength he hewed down and chopped clean through a tentacle that was coiled around several warriors.
Szzzz…
Black blood splattered across the axe-head, and at once the metal began to hiss and corrode. The soldiers who had been bound by that tentacle were already turning a ghastly purple in the face.
Andric's heart lurched.
"Careful!" he shouted to Reger and Yenagath. "Its blood is poisoned. It eats through metal!"
Hearing this, Yenagath slipped aside from a striking tentacle and cried sharply, "Archers, loose!"
Shaa-shaa-shaa!
Countless arrows flew. Some thudded into the writhing lengths of flesh, others plunged past them and vanished into the lake.
"Wooo… wooo…"
A sound like the wailing of evil spirits rose from the waters. The creature seemed enraged. In an instant the tentacles went mad, thrashing in all directions, lashing at everything within a hundred paces of the shore.
Crack.
One blow struck a boulder and shattered it at once into flying fragments. Every watching heart clenched tight.
If that strike had fallen on a man instead, armor and body alike would have been smashed into scraps.
In that perilous moment Yenagath slipped behind Reger and called, "Guard me!"
Reger did not waste words. He simply raised his blade and moved it faster and faster, parrying each stroke of the tentacles that came within reach, steel ringing as he met them.
Behind him, Yenagath closed his eyes. He held the tip of his sword to the earth and began to chant in a swift, low voice, speaking words none there could understand.
After a few breaths he snapped his eyes open and drove the sword hard into the ground.
"Light, be with me!"
A surge of elemental power burst out from him. Cracks of pale brilliance ran from his feet over the ground, racing outward until they reached the waters of Mirrormere.
Boom.
The lake burst into spray. Light flared out from beneath the surface. In the depths the monster screamed in pain, and all its tentacles recoiled at once, whipping back into the dark.
"Fall back!"
Andric's shout rang over the roar of the water, and the soldiers quickly withdrew from the cursed shoreline.
The surface of Mirrormere heaved and slapped against the stone. The three commanders stood shoulder to shoulder, weapons in hand, watching the lake with narrow eyes.
They waited a long time. No new tentacles appeared. The silence held. At last they let out the breath they had been holding.
Andric spat to one side, still shaken. "What in all the world is that thing, to be so vicious?"
"It is the Watcher in the Water."
A stern voice sounded behind them.
They turned quickly, and when they saw who had come their faces lit with sudden relief and joy. They were just about to bow when he lifted his hand.
"Do not move. It is not dead yet."
...
After leaving the snowy summit, Kaen Eowenríel had guessed that the Dwarves, unwilling to draw other powers into their fate, would abandon the thought of going to Lothlórien to seek the dew of the Blue Sacred Tree.
So he had left his armies outside Dimrill Dale, including a regiment of the King's Guard that ever followed him.
He himself had ridden on to Lothlórien to gather the dew of Lúna Olonta.
The journey there and back, with all that delayed him along the way, had taken more than half a month.
He had not expected that when he returned with a great store of the blue Tree's dew, he would find Dimrill Dale littered with corpses.
From the look of it he judged the battle had broken out earlier than planned, and that the dark creatures had struck first. He spurred his horse and rode straight into the vale.
There by chance he met the withdrawing troops and, after hearing their report, understood what they had faced.
They had encountered the Watcher in the Water.
It was a creature that dwelt in deep pools, a being not fit to be named. No one had ever seen its true form, only its many questing limbs.
In the original tale, in the year 2989, Balin of Durin's line had set out after the restoration of Erebor. With him went Oin, Ori, Frár and other Dwarves on a colonizing venture, traveling south to the Dimrill Dale before Moria.
Their purpose was to win back their ancestral home, which had fallen under the sway of the Balrog and the Orcs, and to seek the long lost Rings of Power given to the Dwarves.
When they reached Dimrill Dale they clashed with lingering Orcs. Flói was slain in that battle and buried by the shore of Mirrormere.
Afterward Balin's followers passed in through the Dimrill Gate and took Moria's Twenty-first Hall on the seventh level as their main stronghold. Balin named himself "Lord of Moria" and set his seat in the Chamber of Mazarbul.
For five years they prospered. They retook the First Hall and the Bridge of Khazad-dûm and other key places. They reopened mithril seams and found relics like the Axe of Durin.
But in the end it was only a harvest before a killing winter.
In the year 2994, Balin was shot by an Orc archer hiding behind rocks at the shore of Mirrormere and died there.
The Dwarves slew the assassin, but hosts of Orcs from the mountains poured into Dimrill Dale, and the dark creatures of the deep places in Moria rose to strike from within. Hemmed in on both sides, the Dwarves were forced to fall back to the Chamber of Mazarbul.
They had meant to break out by way of the West-gate, but there the Watcher in the Water barred their path. Oin was dragged into the lake and lost.
In the end Balin's little kingdom perished. None survived.
Their last stand was written in the Book of Mazarbul and lay there in the dark until the year 3019, when the Fellowship, seeking to cross Moria, found it again.
Gandalf had once guessed that the Watcher in the Water was one of those evil things wrought by Morgoth, sent into the world to befoul the waters and weaken Ulmo, Lord of the Seas.
...
Now Kaen raised his hand, bidding the armies halt. He recalled that in those ancient accounts it was said the Watcher in the Water felt for its prey through the tremors upon the ground. However the watcher did not dwell in mirrormere, Kaen knew at once that this could be the doing of Durin's Bane.
He swung down from his horse and stooped to pick up a stone. Without hurry he cast it far out onto the lake.
Splash.
The stone struck and sank. Ripples spread over the surface, and for a moment nothing else stirred.
Many there began to breathe again.
Then, with a sharper splash, a far greater surge of water leapt up, and a tentacle as thick as a man's arm thrust suddenly out where the stone had fallen, tasting the air before slowly withdrawing back into the depths. Every warrior's muscles tensed at once.
Kaen's eyes narrowed slightly.
"None of you move," he said calmly. "This creature is mine."
He drew Courage and Glory, the king-sword ofEowenría, and at his other hip the Elven blade Glamdring.
Light flared within him and flowed into both blades. Holding one in each hand, he walked step by step toward the shore, making no effort to soften his tread.
The lake rippled, shivering with rings of light and shadow. Something slid nearer below the surface. No one needed to be told what it was – the Watcher's limbs were gathering.
When Kaen reached the water's edge, a tentacle burst from the lake in a sudden lunge, whipping straight toward him...