Her dark eyes rolled back into her skull to reveal only white. At the center of the circular room, the domed ceiling shedding it's unearthly glow over her, Zôrzimril lay on her back. Arms spread like wings, she slipped in and out of the trance. A piece of charcoal lay nearby. Written in a circle around her body was the incantation, scrawled in black ash.

Her lips moved, her mumbling inaudible. She struggled up through the layers of blood and bone, flesh and stone. Behind her unseeing eyes, she waited for the heaviness of the physical realm to pass. 

Shimmering shades of grey burned away. Her spirit rose like a wraith from her body and she opened her eyes. Her true eyes.

The air in the empty room was filled with beings of shadow and light. Trails like smoke drifted around her, her limbs as formless as light. She was a visitor only, but the formless beings did not hinder her search. 

She rested a moment in the stillness of the Unseen, floating as though in water. What she wanted next would take even more effort. She willed her spirit to ascend up through the dome overhead and into the gloom of the sky hanging over Mordor. Above the noxious fumes of the Morgul Vale, the sun broke free of the west. She winced and screeched, shielding her face, but forced herself to stare through the pain.

Peering through the searing burn of the sun, she saw it. His city was so close, yet it might as well have been leagues away. The warrior in her dreams, the man whose future she had envisioned, it was his white city. Minas Tirith. 

A tall figure stood at the apex of the mountain tower. Blinded by the purity of the stone reflecting the sunlight, Zôrzimril forced herself through the pain. It had been years since she had lived in the light. Sometimes, she wondered if she ever truly had existed outside the Darkness. 

Her spirit took to the clear sky like a cloud. Invisible, she swam through the thick air towards the man. It was him. She had known it. Her midnight vision of his death had only been a foretelling. It had yet to happen. 

He braced his elbows against the short wall hemming in the knife's edge of the tower guard. Dark hair brushed over his armored shoulders. His grey eyes were keen on the east. The firm line of a stubborn mouth frowned in thought. He ran a hand over his bearded chin and let out a harsh breath through his nose, an altogether human gesture. It almost shocked her. Even when she inhabited her body, she sometimes forgot her humanity.

"Brother!" Another young man trotted towards him. There was no mistaking the family resemblance between them, if the other was slightly shorter in stature and not as thickly muscled. "Boromir!"

Boromir. Zôrzimril spoke his name with a ghostly mouth.

The man of Gondor blinked towards her where she floated beside him. Their eyes met. Her breath came quickly in her body back beyond the border of the Mountains of Shadow. It was enough of a distraction. Her trance was lost.  

Zôrzimril gasped. She shot up off the floor, grasping her throat. She rubbed the tears from her wet eyes. A strangled cry of surprise sounded behind her.

"Mis- Mistress?" The bent shape of the orc slinked forward. "Your food-"

"It's over there," she snapped, waving a hand towards the untouched meal at the lonely table in the corner.

"But..." Licking it's wormy lips, the edges cracked and black with dry blood, Ogli the serving orc hobbled forward. "My master said you must eat-"

"I know what he wants. I know what they all want," she grumbled, shoving the orc to the side as she stalked towards the table. Heaving a sigh, she rubbed her throbbing forehead. Her plain, black frock hung on her thin frame. "The Lieutenant of the Dark Tower told me himself the last time that he spoke to me. I must eat more."

Truth be told, she forgot most days. She spent so much time out of her body or trying to reach the Unseen realm, that she neglected her physical body. But she knew that was a mistake. She couldn't perform her sorcery without strength of the flesh. She shuddered when she recalled the Mouth's reason for her to eat more. She needed to keep her physical body healthy so that she might bear children someday, heirs for the line of the Witch-king that could be sworn into the service of the Dark Lord. 

"Shall I take the plate..." Ogli asked tentatively, rubbing his scaly hands. He reached out for the plate of food.

Silently, she shook her head. With a vicious hand, she slapped the orc away, sending him into the marble floor. She sniffed and took a bite of bread. 

"No," she sighed again with a shrug. "Be gone."

Sniveling, the orc slinked away, taking his stink with him. Zôrzimril grimaced at the lingering odor as she ate. There was no such thing as foul smells in the Wraith-world. Nothing ugly like orcs or trolls. She knew that her fate had already been decided in the physical world, but perhaps she could win enough favor to someday escape to the Unseen for good. There was nothing in her physical body that met the same ecstasy as when she was in a trance. 

Eating fast, she didn't even taste the food. Draining her cup of wine in a single pull, she slammed the cup on her work table. Scrolls and parchments in Black Speech and ancient Anduic scattered the space. The Mouth had left them for her in his last visit as well. It had been almost a year. He would return soon to assess her improvements. She planned on impressing him. Perhaps soon, the Witch-king would finally reveal himself to her.

She needed to do something that could catch their attention. Drumming her nails on the table, she mused on the man of Gondor.

"Boromir," she dared to say it aloud, testing it's strangeness on her tongue. His name bounced off the concave walls before returning to her. 

He could be used to her advantage. But how?