O Fire.
O Death.
What have you wrought?
The pain was fading away as he fell deep into the cold and the shadow. Smaug knew this shadow of old and harbored no fear of darkness or its depths. It was, to him, a return. And yet, how furious he was to have been slain, how bitter his hatred towards those who had driven him from his treasures. Within the fall, he knew nothing but anger and it called him to fight. Scrambling with claws, with spears, he pulled towards the shallows of the lake and life once more.
Almost, almost back to the sun and to revenge. The shadow wisped away, and he would rise from the shores and bathe the Children of Men and the Line of Durin in flame.
The pain returned. It bloomed from his chest and its branches wrapped around his heart and his body. It was a wretched tree of death, and there was no way to conquer it.
He roared into the silence and ever more silence was the answer.
I will help you.
I will curse you.
Away from your darkness and into the light, you seek to climb?
Then climb you shall.
He fell backwards then, but not into the shadow. Into a place of light, blue as a midnight full of stars, where above him was a sky not of sky but of shimmers, and he was more weightless than when he had taken flight. Before him was a spirit in the shape of mortal creatures, with pale bare limbs and hair of spun copper that floated about her ivory face. She raised her dainty hand, with strands of pearls woven between her fingers, and held it towards the mark of the black arrow.
Live, O Death.
Live.