Disclaimer: I do not own The Hobbit
"Set her down there." Thorin motioned to his nephews. The set the elf down on the sandy cave floor as gently as they could. Oin bent down and started examining her.
This wasn't good.
Her arms were about three inches too long.
She had literally ripped her arms trying to get them to safety.
"Her lute!" Bilbo squeaked, "Get her lute!" He frantically ran over to her bag and pulled out her lute.
"Bilbo she's the only one who knows how to play it," Dori tried to point out to the hobbit. "And she's in no condition to be playing songs right now."
"No, she can!" Bilbo knelt down beside Oin and Alora. "I once managed to get her to tell me that she stores spells in her lute for emergencies. All she really needs to do is play one chord, and she'll heal herself."
"Bilbo I don't even know if she can lift a finger right now."
"We can't give up on her." Bilbo cast pleading eyes at the others.
There was a paused as the dwarves looked at each other. What else could they do? She had save them.
"I'll give her something to wake her up," Oin sighed.
The hobbit started pacing back and forth while Oin got out some herbs and placed them under the elf's tongue. In no time, her breathing was faster and there were grunts of pain.
"You need to play elf." Thorin put her lute in front of her hands.
"Half-elf," Alora mumbled, eyes glazed over.
"Come on Alora," Bilbo pleaded. "Wake up and play!"
Oin lifted her eyelid and still there was not a very reassuring response. "Oh dear." For the first time the healer looked down and saw red around the clothes on her back. Upon further examination, they found a gash along her spine.
"Must have been the rock." Bombur murmured. The dwarves were silent for a moment.
"Fili, Kili, no," Thorin saw his nephews coming toward the elf with bowls of collected rainwater in their hands. Next thing they knew, the boys were dowsing the elf in freezing water.
Alora gasped and blinked her eyes. "WHAT THE FUCK?!"
"She' awake!" The princelings cried triumphantly.
Alora opened her mouth to say something, then stopped. "Guys… why can't I move my arms?"
"Place my fingers exactly where I say. If it's half a note off it won't work." Alora instructed. "Or, you know, I accidentally activate some other random spell I have stored away."
Thorin, having been the only other one with stringed instrument experience, held her fingers to the strings of an F major.
"And this is easier than you just having me play the spell how?" Thorin grunted.
"Other than the fact that we're running out of time since the adrenalin that's holding back my pain is running out and I'm the only one who knows how to do this?" Alora gritted her teeth. "I'm not teaching you something that you should have never known about," Alora was sweating. "Do it now."
The dwarf carefully moved her thumb, butting the correct chords.
Alora sucked in a breath and pinched her eyes shut.
Her skin started moving, pulling itself back into its proper position. They heard a crunch, her shoulder sliding back into place. Oin watched the skin close up on her back.
"Alora it worked!" Bilbo cheered, but when he looked at her face he saw that she had passed out again.
"Let her sleep lad," Oin set Alora down.
"We should all get some rest while we can," Thorin ordered.
Something was wrong. Alora's subconscious dragged herself into consciousness, trying to warn her of something.
Forcing her mind to corroborate, Alora focused on the sounds around her before hesitantly opening her eyes.
The company was sleeping. Wait, no. There was someone talking.
"You're used to not belonging anywhere!" A coarse whisper rang out. There was a pause and Alora tried to sort out in her mind who it was. "I'm sorry-"
"No you're right. We don't belong anywhere."
Bilbo and Bofur.
"Besides, you all have Alora. She's ten times stronger than I will ever be and she can do more for you all. It's best if I just get out of the way."
Alora tilted her head so she was looking at the two standing by the entrance of the cave.
Bilbo turned to leave when Bofur stopped him, "What's that?"
Bilbo sword was glowing.
The hobbit's face drained of all color.
"Get up-!"
The floors gave out beneath them.
They pooled into tubes that lead them down into the mountain. Alora gritted her teeth and drove one of her knives into the side of the shoot, suddenly halting. It wasn't until she started to regain her breath that she realized the others had no way of halting their dissent.
Fucking.
Dwarves.
Alora retracted her blade and continued her bumping decent behind her companions.
Alora came to an abrupt stop when she landed on top of a pile of dwarves.
She steadied her swimming vision in time to see goblins. Hundreds and hundreds swarming them and carrying them off like a wave. She was pressed up against on all sides by screeching goblins. Somehow, she managed to catch a glimpse of Bilbo, simply huddling and slipping away from the goblins. Clever little bugger.
Her short lived relief died away when another goblin with a whip started shoving her. "Get your bloody hands off me!" She growled with her teeth clenched so hard she was surprised they didn't break this time. The goblin looked taken back when he saw the fury building up in her eyes. That is, before he realized that he was infact the one with the whip. He raised it to strike her when she flicked a small hidden dagger into his throat and shoved him off the side of the cliff into the dark ravine beside them. With the crowd surging forward. No one seemed to notice, but goblins quickly took her arms again.
"Alora!" Kili's face popped up as he was dragged/shoved forward.
The goblin restraining her gave him a rotten snarl, "Oh don't worry," his voice broken up and jagard . "We'll take good care of your female."
Kili and Fili, who somehow could still never get separated even as hostages, both lunged at the goblin, but was beaten by Dwalin who slammed his head into the goblin from behind. Not hard enough to make it fall into the ravine as well, but enough to make it stumble and fall. It got up to attack them all, but Alora lept up, wrapped her leg around it's neck and threw her weight backwards, snapping its neck in one motion as she stood up.
"Enough!" Alora hissed before she was swept away with the crowd, her actions yet again unnoticed in the confusion.
Sometimes Alora hated the traits her mother had passed down to her. It was just like her mother to care for everyone, no matter what. She was smart, of course, but she had always been a compassionate being. She had apparently also passed some of this down to her daughter. Because, apparently, Alora had grown to care for these dwarves.
It was a god damn inconvenience.
Alora herself could take a beating. Her supervisor had personally tortured her until she was convinced that she was already in hell and that there would never be a death for her. But this… why was she cursed to always make attachments with those around her? Watching them get hit, watching them get bitten, watching her dwarves get clawed…
Every whip, every cry of pain, was permanently engraved into her mind.
They were dragged towards an assembly, where an absurdly large goblin sat on a throne of bones, several of his subjects crushed under his feet. Alora was fed up with the maggot before he even opened his mouth.
"Which makes you, nobody, really." The Goblin King looked down at Thorin, his neck flap jiggling with the movement. Thorin growled in front of the company. "I know a someone who would pay a pretty price for you head. Just your head, nothing attached."
"And we get the rest of them?" A goblin near by asked eagerly to another, drawing Alora's attention away from the conversation.
"Well what else are we to do with them?" It grinned with a vile mouth. "I'm sure they'll be an entertaining lot. The old one might not last long."
"Neither will the youngins. We'll have to be careful with the female if we want her to last."
Red started to blur her vision. Alora threw caution out the door.
"Lay one of your worthless fingers on any of them, and we'll see how far you get before I rip your innards out through your ass," her voice cut through the noise of the throne room. Alora felt herself grow more and more angry, staring down the (for one blessed moment silent) Goblin King. And for the first time since she came here, she didn't try and stop it.
A screech split the air, drawing everyone's attention to a goblin who had been going through the luggage and had discovered Thorin's elf blade.
"I know that sword!" The Goblin King scrambled back onto his throne, stomping on several of his minions in the process. "It's the Goblin-cleaver! The Biter! The blade that sliced a thousand necks! Murderers and fellow travelers of elves! Slash them! Beat them! Bite them! Gnash them! Let them never see the light again! Kill them! Kill them all!"
"Half-elf." That was the last intelligible word Alora said before she let go.
One minute the dwarves were being beaten by goblins on all sides. The next, a scream rang out.
The goblin above poised above Ori fell over with a dagger embedded in its skull. All around them goblins started to fall in rapid sync. The dwarves stood up slowly, and saw Alora surrounded by a sea of dead bodies two blades in her hands. But what made them pause was when she looked over at them. Her eyes, they were blood red, and her pupils were the shape of a wild cat's.
"Malah help us." Bofur breathed.
The goblin king just stared, terrified of the elf before him. Alora slowly turned to look at the goblin king, her face split into a smile filled with blood lust. They watched as she launched herself at the goblin king and drove her longest blade into the middle of his neck.
"Run you fools!" Gandalf came running out of no where.
The dwarves rushed to grab their packs and flee from the swarms of goblins coming for them.
The two princelings stopped their Uncle, "What about Alora?!"
"There are more goblins coming! We must leave now; Alora will follow!" Gandalf cried, trying to drag them along.
"We cannot abandon her!" Bofur and Ori agreed.
They looked back and saw that there were indeed more goblins coming, but not towards them. It was Alora who had their focus. She stood atop the dead goblin king, a flurry of blood and steel. Left and right, swinging around stabbing and cutting. Goblins dropped around her before they could even bring their weapons up. With her two long knives she jumped onto a large goblin, driving them into its chest.
Something changed with the goblins. Slowly at first, their advances became less enthusiastic. A few farther off seemed to pause when they saw the massacre going on below them. Then they started to turn. And run the opposite direction. Blood soaked, she advanced, slashing those who didn't get out of the way in time. There were screams from the hordes as they started to claw over one another, desperate to get away.
"Alora!" Thorin shouted.
She didn't hear him. She couldn't hear him. He could barely hear anything over the shrieks and howls filling the caves. The goblins were really fleeing now. Clawing over each other to find an escape. She wouldn't let them have one.
Thorin made to grab her arm when she whipped around, grabbed his outstretched arm, brought it under him, and with that momentum was able to drag him off his feet and shove him towards the others before he hit the ground, all in the blink of an eye.
"Get out of here!" She hissed, a flicker of fear on her face when she saw what she did to Thorin.
The dwarves watched her start to march back to the fleeing goblins, her fingers twitching at her sides.
"She's going to kill them all," Balin spoke from beside Thorin.
Alora cut down another three goblins in her path.
"And she's going to kill herself doing it."
She tore through another. And another. And another.
"Wait!" Fili shot up beside his uncle, "Doesn't she usually knock herself unconscious before this happens?"
"Fili we can't get anywhere near her like this."
"But she'll want to go unconscious! It's what she kept on doing," Fili insisted.
"Yea," Kili joined, "she'll be more likely to let us do it." He was already moving towards Ori.
The younger dwarf, after a moment of arguing, reluctantly grabbed up his sling shot. He hefted a larger stone and aimed it at Alora.
"You realize," Dwalin looked at Thorin, "that if it doesn't knock her out, she'll come for us."
Ori released the shot.
It sailed straight towards the back of Alora's head.
She turned around.
Thorin would later recall her meeting his eye a fraction of a second before the stone hit. He could have sworn that something akin to relief flashed across her face.
They were running the minute she dropped to the ground. Dori, ever the mother hen, scooped up Alora and nodded to Thorin. They started to run after Gandalf, mindful of the fact that the goblins could regain their strength and charge them once more.
They began to slow down as they swerved through the trees. Dori set Alora down and tried to rouse her from her unconsciousness. After a few tries he was able to wake her up. Alora stood slowly, hand pressed against the growing lump on her forehead. She looked around and saw the other giving her wary glances.
Great. They hate me again.
Alora thanked Dori and walked over to the edge of their group, slightly subdued.
"Where's Bilbo."
Son. Of. A-
A/N: Hey guys! So sorry this chapter was a day late!
The dwarves are warming up to Alora (whether they realize it or not), and oh dear, Alora's pissed. Don't mess with her babies. Please review!
