"Thruda!" she heard someone shout as she appeared in the goblin kingdom with Thorin, and she turned around. Gandalf was surrounded by dozens of goblins, but there was a clean circle around him that instantly gave off the message "do not cross on fear of death because I am a badass wizard." Not that it actually said that. "Why are you here?"
It was then that she realized that everyone had their weapons back and were fighting goblins. Seeing that they were unarmed, a goblin ran at Thorin and Thruda. Thorin pushed her out of the way and used its momentum to flip the goblin onto the ground, where he lay, unconscious.
"Helping you!" Thruda called back. Gandalf looked upset at her poor judgment, but he tossed her her weapons and Thorin Orcrist. Thruda reckoned that he had found the armory. Thorin immediately sliced down the nearest goblins, and she went back to back with him as she alternated between shooting and slicing.
Thruda heard a shout from behind her, and she saw that Thorin had locked swords with a goblin and couldn't get out. The goblin, because of its superior size, was forcing the two swords closer to Thorin. Without thinking, she turned from her fight and helped Thorin push the goblin back with her sword. It fell backwards, and she smoothly switched to her bow, planting an arrow in his chest.
"Saved you!" Thruda told Thorin as she turned back to her side.
He rolled his eyes. "Did not! I could have handled it!" he protested as he hacked down some more goblins. She suddenly found herself getting caught up in the focus in his eyes as he chopped down goblin after goblin... and she was leaving her side undefended. She was brought back to earth with a jolt when there was a clang a few inches away from her face. She turned around to see that Thorin had locked blades with a goblin that was about to chop her head off. Thorin pushed him back and gave him a brutal kick to the stomach. "Saved you!" he teased.
"Oh yeah?" Thruda demanded, focusing on fighting again. "If you kill less goblins than I do by the end of this, you're in my debt, and visa versa!"
"If one of us dies, do we still have to keep the bet?" Thorin asked.
"Yup! There's such thing as an afterlife!" she answered merrily.
Thorin rolled his eyes. "You're on!" he shouted.
Thruda raised an eyebrow as she shot a few more goblins and chopped through even more. "You're a goner, Oakenshield!" she told him, noticing that the rest of the dwarves were grinning at their conversation.
"Oakenshield?" Thorin asked. "That's a new one."
As she killed another dozen goblins (keeping careful count of how many she killed), Thruda shrugged. "I was going to call you a git and a prat with mental issues and a pride issue, but I figured that was rude," she answered.
He laughed, almost tripping onto a goblin's spear because he wasn't paying attention. She pulled him up before he could get impaled. "You should get a foul for that," she told him laughingly. "Or I should get a bonus."
"Oh, shut up, hybrid," he joked. Then he froze, wondering if what he had called her would get his head chopped off by her sword.
But she just laughed, causing him to relax. "You're hilarious, Oakenshield," she called back. "You think that you could shut my big mouth up?"
"Shut up, you lovebirds!" Gandalf shouted. "You have fighting to do!" They laughed as Gandalf gave them a look that was somewhat sharp but also somewhat happy.
Thorin was about to kill another goblin when Thruda slipped on a dead goblin's hand. She fell forward, almost falling face-first into a bunch of goblins. He grabbed her arm and pulled her back, dropping his sword onto the ground. Once pulling her back towards their safe little circle, he pulled too hard and ended up leaning towards the other edge of the circle, almost falling into the goblin horde there. Now this time she was pulling him up. "We're even," he told her before she could say anything else. She rolled her eyes and covered Thorin as he picked up his sword.
"Follow me!" Gandalf told them. "I know where the exit is!" Thorin and Thruda instantly moved away from their little circle and inched towards Gandalf, taking down goblins as they did.
Thruda blocked one from getting Ori, then chopped its head off. "How many did you kill?" she asked Thorin.
"Fifty-nine!" he answered, then he blocked a goblin's spear and sliced at the same goblin. "Sixty, now! How about you?"
Smirking, Thruda answered, "Sixty-one."
"Oh, that's it," Thorin said. He went out of his way to kill another one. "We're even!"
She rolled her eyes and pushed him forwards, away from harm. Thruda brought up the rear of the group and started shooting the goblins, making sure that they didn't come within a ten foot radius of them. "Oh, grow up," she replied. "Now I got sixty-eight. There's an advantage of using a bow and arrow."
He took the bow from Thruda, aggravated, and switched positions so that he was now the one covering her. "If you die, Thorin Oakenshield, I'm going to kill you," she snapped as she heard her bowstring sing.
"Should I assume that you're going to be killing me in the afterlife, then?" he quipped as he shot a goblin that was getting slightly too close for comfort. "Seventy-five," he told her, passing her back the bow and switching again. She pushed Thorin forward and shot a few more.
Thorin glanced ahead. "Gandalf is going ahead with the rest of the dwarves; he's trusting us to hold the fort here," he said.
"And... seventy-six!" Thruda exclaimed, shooting the last goblin. She looked around for more opponents, but she realized that none were there. "We got them! And I WON!" she started doing a happy dance, jumping up and down and shaking her head wildly while laughing. She looked so ridiculous that Thorin started laughing, as well. Then she saw the one that she had clearly shot straight through the heart jump up and wave to someone behind him. In a few seconds, an even bigger horde of goblins came running out from another room. "Or not," she muttered.
They looked at each other, eyes wide. "RUN!" they yelled as one, and they forgot about killing them. She ran full steam ahead, making sure that Thorin was safe and wasn't in danger of getting run over by an angy horde of goblins.
In just a few seconds, they caught up to Gandalf and the other dwarves. Bilbo still wasn't there, but she didn't have time to worry about it. "Goblins," Thruda panted, out of breath from the run.
"Horde," Thorin added.
"Coming!" they shouted together.
Gandalf leapt into action immediately. "Everybody, run!" he ordered, and all the dwarves besides Thorin and Thruda ran. Gandalf turned to see them standing by him, one on each side. "Get going, you two!"
Thorin and Thruda shared a glance. "No," Thorin said to Gandalf. "We don't desert friends."
"Besides," she continued, "we have a goblin-killing competition to finish." She threw a smirk at Thorin before readying her bow.
"Curse the stubbornness of dwarves!" Gandalf hissed, but he didn't send them away. Thorin sent her a victorious grin, which she sent back.
Then Thorin remembered that she had a bow. He turned to the running dwarves. "Kili, your bow!" he shouted, and Kili tossed Thorin his bow before running full speed ahead again. "Looks like we're even," he said to Thruda. She rolled her eyes.
Goblins came three by three out of the exit. Thruda took care of the ones on the right side, Thorin took care of the ones on the left side, and Gandalf got the ones on the middle. It was actually kind of pathetic. In a few minutes the doorway was totally blocked by dead goblin bodies.
"Let's go!" Gandalf roared, and he ran. Thorin and Thruda were right beside him, hoping that the barrier of dead goblins would hold long enough for them to get a nice head start.
They soon caught up to the other dwarves, who had slowed down and were arguing about going back for them. The three of them merged into the group effortlessly, and they started running for a good five minutes.
"Halt!" Gandalf cried. They stopped running, panting for breath. "I think we are at a safe distance."
Thruda laughed. "We'd better be," she replied. "I never realized how out of shape I was until now." That caused everyone, even Gandalf, to chuckle. Then she looked at Thorin. "Well, I'm always able to beat Thorin, no matter what shape I'm in."
Thorin rolled his eyes. "You didn't beat me," he said. "We ran right next to each other the whole time. And, anyway, we tied for the goblin-slaying competition."
Kili looked upset. "You had a goblin-slaying competition and you didn't tell us?" he asked, sounding heartbroken.
"Yeah, Uncle, I thought you liked us!" Fili exclaimed, sounding just as pouty.
Thruda rolled her eyes. "Oh, grow up, you two," she said. "And last time I checked, I got eighty-five when you got eighty-four.
"Nope," he replied with a satisfied smirk. "You're counting the last one that you shot in the cave, but he jumped back up, so you didn't kill him."
Frowning, Thruda muttered, "Well, if it wasn't so stubbornly staying alive, I would have won." Thorin, who was the only one close enough to hear her, chuckled.
A voice interrupted them. "Where is our burglar?" Gandalf asked before Thorin could reply. Gandalf looked around, trying to find Bilbo. Thruda started to get nervous and looked around as well.
"We should break into groups and try to find him," she said immediately. "He could be around here somewhere. He may have been able to escape because of the ruckus we made and followed us. Maybe a few of us should go back into the goblin kingdom to find him."
Thorin shook his head. "He has left us," he told them all. "The hobbit saw a chance to escape from us and this quest, and he took it. We number fourteen once more."
"Bilbo wouldn't leave us," Thruda snapped at him.
"Then where do you think he is? He clearly was not captive of the goblins, or else he would have been in the same cave with us!" Thorin shouted, angry.
She stomped her foot on the ground. "Why are you so desperate for Bilbo to be dead? You've shown him nothing but hatred ever since the beginning of this adventure!" she exclaimed.
"Why are you so desperate for him to be alive?" Thorin demanded. "Admit it, Thruda, the odds of him being alive are very low."
Her magic started escaping from her. She had never known it to do that before; the only time her magic had ever responded to her emotions was when she had given Thorin the small fire in the mountains to help keep him warm. But she was so angry that her magic destroyed all of her resistance. Fire flew out of Thruda's bow and hit Thorin in the chest.
Thruda dropped her bow in shock. What had she done? "Thorin!" she cried, rushing over to where he had fallen on the ground. "Thorin, please tell me you're okay, please, I didn't mean to do it, I just lost control!"
Gandalf had hurried over, too, and he was on the other side of an unconscious Thorin. "I do not know what you just did, Thruda, but this is not regular fire," he told Thruda. "I cannot heal these burns." Gandalf then looked up at her. "You seem to have a strong connection with the element of fire."
She ignored him and bent back down over Thorin. "I have no clue how I did this," she whispered. She looked up at Gandalf. "I'm a danger to everyone. I can't be a part of this quest any more. I'm going to end up hurting someone. I'm sorry, but I'm leaving."
Just as she was about to stand up and run away, Fili said something. "Hey, Gandalf, did you make another wizard's staff?" he asked.
Thruda turned around and saw that Fili was holding a black wizard's staff with multiple wizard runes. She strode over to him and took the staff. Looking it over, she had a feeling that it was familiar... and then she made the connection. Her bow, that had appeared after she had refused the wizard's staff, had been black with wizard runes.
"You!" Thruda snarled, turning to Gandalf. She pointed a finger at him. "You changed the staff into my bow! You know that wizards' powers are stronger if they're powered through staffs, and I had one and I didn't even know it! That's why my powers got out of control!"
Gandalf nodded, surprisingly calm. Most of the time, her anger would have scared the living daylights out of whoever she was yelling at; the dwarves around Gandalf and Thruda looked edgy and nervous. She had never been this angry at even Thorin.
"Yes, I made the staff a bow," Gandalf told her. "Thorin and I both realized that you need to use your magic to be able to fully defend yourself! You will never be a full wizard without a staff!"
Thruda glared and pointedly snapped the staff in half, right in front of his face. "I will not learn how to be a wizard," she growled. "I never did before, and if this accident did anything, it made me even more certain that I'm not going to learn how to control the wizard part of me." And she stormed away from Gandalf and the rest of the Company, ignoring their calls for her to come back, with only her sword and the clothes on her back. And her anger.
There was lots of anger.