"You aren't even wet!" Beren accused as he brushed the semi frozen rain from his brow. They had been on the road for nearly four days, pushing on through the worsening weather. Nights had been spent on whatever piece of high ground could be found, stretched out under the wagon with the warmth of fires or rocks that Jocasta had enchanted to heat them.

"Well I am wearing a hat," Jocasta protested mildly. The rain fell around her without ever quite seeming to strike her. Beren peered at her and shook his head dismissing the matter with a good natured laugh.

"A little rain is good for ya," Gurin declared, looking up to the sky to allow the rain to run down the creases of his craggy face, soaking his beard. Buri pulled his cloak tighter, obviously not sharing the sentiment but to stoic to say so. The worse the weather had gotten the better the dwarves seemed to like it.

"Little being the operative word," Otar said, "the open sky can be too generous."

"I think I see something," Jocasta called out, calling attention back to the road. A stone gatehouse was emerging out of the rain. It was ancient and tumbledown, the teeth of a rusted portcullis drawn halfway up and frozen in place by rivulets of oxidation. The word 'Morelock' was chiseled into it like a headstone. It looked as if walls had once projected from it, but if so they had decayed into piles of unaffiliated rock within a few feet of the base of the gatehouse.

"Hello the gatehouse!" Jocasta called through cupped hands, earning herself some hard glares from her travelling companions. She shrugged her shoulders.

"We aren't going to know if we don't ask," she pointed out reasonably. There was no response. They advanced cautiously, but other than a rustle of irritated ravens taking flight it was abandoned. They passed under the ancient archway and made their way up a low hill. The ground around them was wild and overgrown but it had once been cultivated. Tangles of ancient grape vines made impenetrable walls and the tangled branches of fruit trees dripped with mossy tendrils. Upon the top of a hill stood an ancient house. It was a mass of peaked towers and crumbling chimeys. Windows rattled with toothy shards of long broken glass and the rooftile had collapsed into gaping holes in many places. A single window on the west side of the house gleamed with a wavering pale light.

"Well at least someone is home," Jocasta said brightly.

_____

Radsvir's fist nearly splinted the worm eaten door. Jocasta winced and even the dwarf seemed embarrassed, glancing up nervously as though the ancient masonry might avalanche down on him. For long moments they stood in silence. At last Radsvir shrugged and lifted his fist again. Before he could strike the door swung open to reveal an old man in a dressing gown. He held a tarnished lamp in his hand and peered at them through thick glasses.

"Hello?" he asked querulously. 

"Master Morelocke?" Beren asked hesitantly, stepping closer to the old man.

"Morelocke?" the old man mumbled, his ancient lips rasping dryly over the world.

"I am Martinus Morelocke," he said, as though he had just discovered the fact himself. He stared away into the distance, eye focused on nothing in this world.

"The last Morelocke," he whispered.