Chapter Fourteen

The Living Silmaril

A/N:TriggerHarpy, thank you for your lightning-fast review! Reviews are like refreshing cups of water cheering spectators pass to marathon runners, they make all the difference ;) Onwards!

The Company sat and paced on the other side of the Front Gate while Dwalin and Astra made their last-ditch attempt at bringing Thorin to his senses. When they returned, the Dwarves straightened up and looked hopeful, but they were met with two glum shakes of the head. A quiet sigh did the rounds.

'All this will be over,' Bofur said to himself as much as them. 'At one point or another. It has to end, it has to. Whether in our favour or not.' The hard work to stay his usual optimistic self in this bleak hour was present in his voice. Bifur nodded to himself and patted his brother on the shoulder.

'Therkâ ikhlitî,' he muttered, with surprising calm.

'Yes, we must hold fast,' said Fili, from a slab of rubble, elbows on his thighs. After a moment of hesitation, he offered his hand to Astra, who slowly crossed to him and took it up. She sat beside him and rested her arm on the inside of his. They didn't exactly have anything to hide anymore.

'Is there any hope for him?' Fili asked her.

'None. Not a grain.'

'Even if he never shows his face again,' said Kili, voice softened by the tears he had shed in the last hour, 'We still can. Fili, we must.'

The brothers exchanged glances, Fili squeezing Astra's hand.

'You're right. We must.' He was about to stand up when the Dwarves turned their heads: footsteps. Thorin gradually emerged from the darkness. Kili stood up and marched forward before anyone else could.

'We will not hide behind a wall of stone,' he cried, 'While others fight our battles for us!' Thorin slowed to a halt before him, sword in hand, but crown and cloak conspicuously absent. 'It is not in our blood, Thorin. It is not in mine.'

He waited for a retort, for a burst of anger, perhaps even for the sword to meet his neck. But none of these things came to pass. Kili searched Thorin's eyes, trying to work out what it was that suddenly felt so different about him. Thorin was calm without anything simmering beneath the surface. He looked only pensive, putting a hand on his nephew's shoulder.

'No. It is not,' he said reverently. 'We are sons of Durin. And Durin's folk do not flee from a fight. Nor,' he added, 'Drive away their kin.'

Kili didn't want to be so easily forgiving. He wanted to be furious a little longer, to direct his pain over Ember at Thorin. But his lower lip quivered and gave way to a new, short burst of tears. Thorin brought their heads together and let his nephew sob in a gesture of many things: sympathy, solidarity, but above all else, sorrow.

When Kili parted and quickly wiped his face, he held himself a little taller and allowed Thorin to stand before the rest of the Company. Fili and Astra stood at the same time, hand in hand, their expressions stoic.

'I have no right to ask this, of any of you,' Thorin said solemnly. He looked up to the bar of daylight at the top of the Front Gate, 'But will you follow me, one last time?'

None of the Dwarves looked at one another to consider this significant request. They each looked within themselves, and each stood, took up their axes, their swords and hammers, and nodded, by themselves.

'You finally rid yourself of the accursed sickness,' said Balin, somewhere between a question and a statement of fact.

'The sickness rid itself of me,' said Thorin, 'Thanks to a voice I heard over all others.' He looked to Astra. She didn't know whether to look back. 'Astra. You need not forgive me. Indeed, you should not forgive me. But I beg forgiveness nonetheless. If I could return to that night and undo my great evil, I would. Were Ember alive now, I would fall on my knees and weep before her like the pitiable wretch I know myself to be. But as we stand, know this: if we fight together, win together, and survive together, then perhaps tomorrow, we can bless your love for Fili, and his love for you, together.'

Astra was so shocked she was physically unable to speak, at least until she glanced at Fili to confirm that she had not just imagined Thorin's words. She saw a small grin pluck at the corners of his mouth, a grin of dual disbelief and relief. She turned back to Thorin and surveyed the rest of the Company.

'Damn right we will,' she said eventually. 'Now get me a sword.'

It hardly took long for the Dwarves to get back their fighting spirit. Decked out in the finest armour Erebor had to offer, with weapons sharpened on whatever rubble was lying around, the Company of Thorin Oakenshield was finally ready to break through the Front Gate and join the battle.

How they were physically supposed to do that was another matter.

'We can't dismantle the ramparts all over again by hand,' said Bofur, staring up at the structure with arms akimbo. 'The battle'll be long over by the time we're through.'

'We need something to knock it down in one fell swoop,' said Fili, looking around the hall as if it would be sitting conveniently close by.

'The gold bells of the clock tower!' Thorin exclaimed. 'When Smaug invaded Erebor he struck one of them loose, we can haul it up from the floor below with rope and -'

'Thorin…' said Ori, squinting at the Front Gate, 'What is that?'

Everyone followed his gaze to a partition in the stonework, the diamond-shaped gap from which Thorin had communicated with Bard. A brilliant light, like a piece of the moon descended, was searing its way through it, bleeding into other cracks in the ramparts.

'On your guard…' warned Thorin, sword at the ready. Astra sided with Fili. Kili whipped out an arrow. The Company formed a line. Before any of them had time to process what was happening, the entire wall blew to dust from the outside. They shielded their eyes in the face of a blinding glow.

Thorin unscrewed his eyes as soon as he could, expecting all manner of nightmarish beasts to storm Erebor. But nothing came at them - everything was still. He tried to peer past the residual light before he realised that the light was a person. A person standing between them and the battlefield, arms stretched to either side, head bowed in recovery from this tremendous act of destruction.

'…Ember.' Astra was the first one to see it. Kili's arrow fell to the floor as, upon apparently hearing her name, the radiant figure raised her head and opened her eyes. They were white as a blizzard, but not blank - she recognised them.

'By the Valar and all thereafter,' Balin breathed. She approached them, serene even while the thunder of battle raged on in full view behind.

As Kili attempted words that only came out as sputtered gasps, Thorin fell to his knees, pale as water. Ember stopped before him and tilted her head. He was more afraid now than at any point during his hallucinations - she looked ready to exact an almighty revenge on him.

Then she extended two glowing hands. Breathless, he let her take hold of his and got to his feet. Her skin was incandescent. It felt as though all the heat that should be singeing him was working furiously at her core to furnish her with this power. The smallest smile played on her face.

'Look ahead.' She released Thorin's hands and turned to Astra and Kili on either side of him. 'Fight. Live.'

With that, she turned around and flung her arms out to the battlefield. A wide beam of light poured from her fingertips and blasted away all obstacles on the moat. It travelled clean down the middle of the battlefield, disintegrating every Orc and goblin in its way. She ran back into the chaos, untouchable.

Thorin was grinning without even knowing it. He laughed, hard, and then rode that laughter into a battle cry:

'CHARGE!'

Astra yelled with the rest of them as, weapons drawn, they followed Ember's stellar example and surged ahead into the daylight. Dwarven shields parted for them, and Dain rejoiced himself hoarse. With this surge in morale, his army united behind the sons of Durin and threw themselves against the Orcs. Arrows rained, hammers flew, and dark blood exploded in cloudbursts. It took Dain and Thorin some frenzied minutes to find each other and stand back to back, batting away at the enemy.

'Cousin!' Dain shouted heartily, 'What took you so long? Is this your doing?' He sliced a goblin's throat with his sword before using it to point into the distance at Ember, who was all the way at the edge of the field, disintegrating Azog's screeching were-worms with spectacular efficiency, 'Because that is the best secret weapon I have ever seen!'

'Nothing to do with me,' Thorin replied in between kills. 'It is all her.'

'Incredible! Have you got any kind of plan?'

'Aye. We're going to take out their leader.'

'Azog?'

When they'd finally cleared the immediate area of Orcs, Thorin whistled for one of the Dwarf army rams to come forth.

'I'm going to kill that piece of filth. DWALIN!'

Within minutes, and with the unprompted help of Ember (who had no problem whatsoever in clearing a route), Thorin had recruited Dwalin, Kili, Fili, and Astra, to borrow rams of their own and follow him on what was now the most high-priority mission of the entire battle.

'I still don't understand!' Fili yelled to Astra over her shoulder, as she clutched the reins of their ram, 'How is she alive? How does she have this much power?!'

'Your guess is as good as mine!' Astra replied, resisting the temptation to give herself whiplash by looking back at the undead Ember as they left her in order to climb parallel to Dale. 'But if this really is her, then there aren't enough words in Middle Earth to capture what I feel!'

Ember had certainly attracted considerable attention already. When a cloud of demonic bats flew over Dale, she only attracted more by hurling balls of white lightning into the sky, causing them to explode like confetti. Once that was dealt with, like a trail of smoke, she sprinted into the centre of the ruined city. Elves lay everywhere in their own spilled blood, stuck with arrows and blades, their immortality compromised forever. In the purified, minimalist landscape of her awakened mind, Ember intended to even the score.

She found Thranduil cast off from his elk, which lay with broken limbs and a still heart on the threshold of a stone archway. He begrudgingly, but expertly, fought off the Orcs and goblins that came at him like cobras. When his sword flew from his hand and cut through nothing more than snowflakes, Ember took over and crumbled the enemy soldiers to ash. Her powers were ruthless, but bloodless. The Elf-lord could only stare open-mouthed before retreating across the square.

'She's here!' Bilbo exclaimed to Gandalf as he spotted her from afar. 'Truly, it's her, oh Gandalf…I have never been more confused.' He put a hand to his head while the old Wizard watched the glowing witch who, mere days ago, had been a mortal, sheltered, idealistic young woman who knew only a handful of spells.

'You are not the only one, dear Bilbo,' he said. 'There are many questions in need of answering, but this is hardly the most conducive environment, I must say.'

'She isn't half doing a bad job of decimating the enemy.'

'Indeed. We may yet survive this.'

'Look!' Bilbo cried again, pointing higher up, 'It's Thorin!'

'And Fili, Kili, Dwalin…and Astra!' said Gandalf, 'He's taking his best warriors.'

'To do what?'

'To cut the head off the snake,' said Gandalf, his expression grim. 'Without a leader to give orders, any army quickly loses focus, and therefore its strength. Combined with Ember's phenomenal powers, they will not stand a single chance.'

'Gandalf!'

Hobbit and Wizard turned at once to this new voice, approaching on horseback.

'Legolas!' Gandalf exclaimed, 'Legolas Greenleaf!'

'A second army is coming,' the Elf reported, wasting no time as he dismounted the horse with Tauriel, 'Bolg is leading a force of Gundabad Orcs. Their bats have already -'

'Been released?' Gandalf finished. 'Yes, so they were made quick work of, as I have no doubt you will see for yourself.' He did not attempt to resolve the bafflement on the Elves' faces, but instead came to an ominous conclusion: 'Gundabad…Oh, this was their plan all along. Azog engages our forces, then Bolg sweeps in from the North.'

'The North?' echoed Bilbo, 'Where is the North?'

'Ravenhill.'

'But…Thorin is up there. And Fili, Kili, Astra, Dwalin, they're all up there!'

'They cannot defeat a second army by themselves,' muttered Gandalf, looking worriedly for signs of Ember, but she was nowhere to be seen. 'The forces on the ground must be dealt with in full, but even her powers cannot be enough to strike down two armies at the same time…oh dear. Oh dear.'

Bilbo instantly became ten times more afraid - for Gandalf to say, 'oh dear' was a true signal of trouble.

'Recall your company. We are finished here.'

Thranduil's subordinate nodded brusquely and organized the few remaining Elf soldiers into single file with one sweep of the hand. Thranduil felt as though the centuries had caught up with him all at once - his very bones ached with fatigue and grief.

'My lord!' Gandalf called urgently, appearing from around a corner as fast as he could, 'Dispatch this force to Ravenhill - the Dwarves are about to be overrun. Thorin must be warned.'

'By all means, warn him,' Thranduil said scathingly, gesturing to the staircase of bodies at his feet, 'I have spent enough Elvish blood in defense of this accursed land. No more.'

'Thranduil…!' Gandalf tried in vain. The Elf-lord and his fragment of living army were already making tracks. Gandalf sighed in despair, before a small and ever-present voice piped up behind him:

'I'll go.'

Gandalf turned to stare down at the Hobbit just to check he wasn't making a very ill timed joke.

'Don't be ridiculous, you'll never make it.'

'Why not?'

'Because they will see you coming, and kill you,' Gandalf said in exasperation.

'No they won't. They won't see me.'

'It's out of the question. I won't allow it.'

'…I'm not asking you to allow it Gandalf,' Bilbo replied with a hint of smart-aleckery in his voice - enough to make the Wizard smile for the briefest of moments.

'Then go forth, and quickly! Every passing second is precious to us!'

Thranduil led his Elves away single-mindedly, slaughtering any remaining Orcs who dared to obstruct them. Needless to say, he was in no mood to encounter Tauriel, a lone agent in Mirkwood green, blocking their only exit from Dale.

'You will go no further,' she declared loudly, her voice full of passion. 'You will not turn away. Not this time.'

'Get out of my way.'

'The Dwarves will be slaughtered,' she said, as unswaying as though her boots were nailed to the stone slabs.

'Yes, they will die,' said Thranduil, delivering his words with plenty of scorn, 'Tomorrow, one year hence, a hundred years from now, what does it matter? They are mortal.'

He expected his exiled Captain of the Guard to recoil in outrage. He did not expect her to notch an arrow in his direction faster than she could draw a seething breath.

'You think your life is worth more than theirs?' she hissed, regarding him with condemnatory eyes, 'When there is no love in it? There is no love in you.'

She regretted her last words as soon as they left her mouth, but to her they were the truth; Thranduil looked sincerely injured by the verbal blow. Then he sliced her bowstring clean in half. Tauriel gasped, feeling a sudden, unnatural weightlessness in one hand as the arrow clattered to the floor and what was left of the string dangled pathetically in snow-flecked breezes.

'What do you know of love? Nothing.' Tauriel had always thought she'd seen the full extent of Thranduil's anger, but as he pointed the tip of his sword at her neck, she realised just how mistaken she was. 'What you feel for that Dwarf is not real. You think it is love? Are you ready to die for it?'

'If you harm her,' said Legolas, coming in between them from nowhere with a stony expression on his face, 'You will have to kill me.' He turned to Tauriel. 'I will go with you to Ravenhill. We may be our own force.'

A/N:Whew, lots of words these last two days. And I have no intention of stopping. There are only 2 or 3 chapters (let's see how generous I'm feeling, hehehe) left of Firesight, which is utter madness because I've been writing this series for so long it's like I should have all my post sent direct to Middle Earth. Anyway, as the great Disney villain Scar said many times, 'Be Prepaaaaaared' !