My I Tunes works again Hallelujah!

This was my favourite chapter to write! I loved it, so much fun!

Important! For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Chapter 26 But I Might Die Tonight

When they stopped Annwn got out of the boat hauling all of her crap to the tree line. Once there she dumped them and went back to the boats. Being paranoid about these things she pulled the boats in further onto the shore fearing they would float away on them, even thought she knew only one would be needed today, if everything went the way they were supposed to.

When she returned from the water's edge she found Gimli puffing and spluttering about being told to recover his strength. She laughed at him and said

"Take it easy Bashful. I'm sure Aragorn was joking." She got a look from Aragorn that said that he was not kidding. She just laughed at him too. Maybe he wasn't so bad after all.

"Where's Frodo?" asked Pippin. The group looked around urgently looking for the hobbit while Annwn stood, paralysed, having a fierce debate with herself. On her right hand she knew that she shouldn't do anything and that she really didn't want to have anything to do with Uric-hai and on the left hand she knew that she would regret it for the rest of her life if she did nothing.

"Ah Hell!" exclaimed Annwn grabbing her bow and quiver and racing after the others who had already left the camp. She cursed the Ring with every step she took speeding her way through the forest. She knew she wouldn't find Frodo. In fact she wasn't worried about him at all. She was worried about Boromir. Her intention, kill orcs and save his ass, once again. The left hand had won.

She was running and running. Where the hell was Boromir and why were her legs so God damned short? She was going farther and farther into the forest and she was sure she was lost when she heard it. The thundering of orc feet. They had to be the ones chasing Pippin and Merry. A moment later she heard the horn of Gondor. It really was astounding the amount of sound that horn could make. She ran towards it turning round and partially retracing her steps. She had found them. There was Boromir trying to redeem himself while the hobbits looked on in shock as the Gondorian slew Uruk-hia. Annwn wasn't worried about the ones with blades, Boromir could deal with those. She was looking for the one with the bow. So far there had been things from the films and the books in this…thing so he would be around somewhere.

She found him. He was readying his bow while hers was already prepared. She took a deep breath raised her bow and drew it back and tried to slow her heavy breaths. 'If you're going to hit anything now's the time Annwn.' She said to herself. She aimed and loosed her arrow. She missed. But not as badly as she would have expected. Her arrow, while missing her intended mark, the throat of the Uruk-hia, split the string on his bow and lodged in his shoulder.

He looked at her, snarled and made for her whilst pulling her arrow out of his shoulder.

"Shit" she said in a tiny voice, she was so screwed. She threw her quiver and bow away. If she didn't kill with her first shot she didn't have a hope in hell of killing him now. She drew her sword and stood waiting for him. At this point she was just hoping that she wouldn't have a tombstone in twenty minutes inscribed with 'death by Uruk-hai'. Nice epitaph.

When he reached her his blows shook her to her core they were so hard. She barely kept up with his blows knowing if she fell behind they would fall on her, and likely as not hack her in two, something she wanted to avoid. He started snarling at her, like a wild animal. He was getting angry. She clearly wasn't dying on his schedule. He took his shield and smashed it into her, sending her flying into a fallen tree stunning her.

When she hit the ground she could feel the bruise starting and the tears in her eyes, but they were the least of her troubles. Her sword was out of reach, a good distance away. She tried to scramble for it but he was quicker.

He took two arrows out of the quiver on his thigh and stabbed her with them. He was aiming for the middle of his prays back and a swift kill but Annwn's knee slipped off the fallen tree trunk and his arrows caught her in her right side instead.

She cried out, it was a blinding pain. Like nothing she had ever experienced before. It was throbbing and pulsing. She had been stabbed. She gave up on her sword when she looked at her side. There, through her like a piece of shishkabab meat were two black tipped poisoned arrows. The points coming out her front and the feathers sticking out her back. The panic and adrenaline was pumping their poison through her body faster than normal. Damn her amygdala!

She could see behind the Uruk-hia Boromir trying to fight his way over to her but there were a lot of Uruks between him and her. She couldn't see either Merry or Pippin anywhere. She had given up on her sword but she still had her knives and some will to live. She twisted her body despite its strong protest and grabbed one of them out of her boot.

The Uruk-hia was about to slice off her head with one sweep of his blade but with a hand that could barely keep its grip on the knife she brought it down. The blade partially severed the Uruk-hia's hand. It cut through the bone but there was still some skin keeping it attached, hanging. If she hadn't been dying she would have laughed (before she barfed) and called him nearly handless nick. But she was dying.

Clearly the Uruk didn't think her stunt was funny. He snarled even louder and more menacingly at her as he ripped off his hanging hand with his good one, and threw it away like garbage. He easily took the knife from Annwn who was desperately trying to hold on to it and consciousness. She was slipping away when he cut through the skin on the front of her waist, between her belly button and the top of her pants. She only half felt the cut through her poison induced delirium. Then there was searing pain.

It felt so like fire that she shrieked. The Uruk-hia had smeared her newly made cut with the stump she had made of his arm. His blood woke up every cell in her body and made it scream. The sound came out her mouth over and over again. With the last bit of clear thinking she had, Annwn twisted the other way making her body scream louder but the burning had to stop. As the Uruk leant over her preparing to kill her with her own blade she thrust her other one into him, the pain had to stop. Her blade hit him in the throat. That finally stopped him in his tracks. He fell to the side...dead.

Boromir finally got to her when the Uruks started to move out. She was white as a sheet and bleeding profusely from her side and waist. Her breathing was heavy and her face was tight in an expression of pain. He drew her up into his arms so the arrows wouldn't be bumped causing her more pain. She gripped the front of his shirt, she needed something to hold on to. She was trying to fight the poison and the pain. He had seen it before; many of his men had fallen this way.

Annwn knew this feeling and knew that she had to get out the important information as fast as she could.

"You have to go after the hobbits. With the others. You can't go to...to home."

"Yes it is my fault they have been taken. I will do my very best to get them back to safety." He watched her try to swallow down the pain.

"Frodo..." Boromir looked sad and conflicted when she said the hobbits name. At the moment she didn't care and pressed on, knowing her time was short. "Fordo is not your fault. Don't let them set me out to sea, leave me in the forest. With the trees, on Parth Galen, please...trees?"

He had failed so many times today. He tried to take the Ring from Frodo and forced him to run away, he had let the little ones get taken and he had failed to protect Annwn. She was now laying his arms bleeding…dying.

"Today is a good day to die." She said in a whisper of a voice. There was a slight smile on her face. She was trying to be her best Klingon, going out of life with strength. Too bad Boromir didn't know what she was referring too.

"Shhh," he tried to calm her. "I have been struck with two orc arrows, and I am alive." Her body was now shuddering violently. Aragorn and Legolas finally arrived.

"Apparently you haven't noticed that I'm a lot smaller than you." He knew she was right, the poison of two arrows in his body was far less than it was in hers. And she had Uruk-hia blood to contend with as well and only the Valar knew what that would do to her.

"Aragorn!" Boromir called, he was there in a second. "Is there anything you can do?" his leader took one look at her and looked into Boromir's face with sad eyes. No! There had to be something! "Is there nothing you can do, no plant, no leaf?"

"No, only powerful elvish medicine could cure this." These words triggered something in Annwn. Maybe there was still hope for her. She could make herself hang on a little longer...maybe, if she really tried.

"Legolas!" she commanded as best she could though the pain. He came looking as confused as the other men. "I am an elf but-"

"Shut up!" she told him "You're fast." Annwn's vision was starting to go tunnel like and she could only see the brightness of his hair and skin. She continued still shaking "in my pack, there's a little bag near the top. Get it?" he had sprinted off without hearing her finish her command.

"What is it?" asked Boromir, hoping the question would help her focus on something other than the pain.

"Galadriel." She gripped onto Boromir's shirt so tight that her tremors were now shaking him slightly as well.

"We should get the arrows out." Aragorn ordered. Boromir nodded but knew how it would hurt. And there were already tears in her clear blue eyes and on her cheeks.

"This will hurt." Aragorn told her

"More...than it does now?" sarcasm was her last line of defence; she knew it would hurt like hell.

"Yes." He said plainly. He cut off the ends with his knife trying not to move them more than he had to. She was wincing. So far she was doing well better than he had expected.

"Hold her Boromir, this will not be pleasant." He grasped them as the same time and counted down. "Three, two, one." He swiftly pulled them from her side. She was still conscience; this was something, thought it only made things worse for her.

She gave a gasp as little lights danced in front of her eyes from the pain. Her head was pounding and thundering at the same time. It even hurt to breath. Then the lights were gone, as well as everything else, suddenly things didn't hurt so much. "I can't see."

"She's fading. Legolas!" he came running. He had found the little pouch she told him about and gave it to Aragorn. Annwn looked much worse than when he left. She was sweating and shaking even harder while there was an even larger pool of blood under her.

Aragorn took the bag and quickly unstopped one sniffed it and knew what it was, orc poison antidote, from the elves no less.

He knew what to do. Now he just had to do it. "I have to undo your shirt."

"Just do it." she managed through gasps. Aragorn swiftly started to undo the bottom buttons but Boromir stopped him.

"We can't, it's not right for us to see her." Annwn finally succumbed to the poison and pain by this point so she didn't know what was going on.

"It's this or let her die!" that won Boromir over though he still thought it was wrong to expose her in such a way. She was for his brother. It was at this point Gimli arrived covered in orc blood and panting. He gasped when he saw the scene in front of him.

What they found under her shirt was shocking. There on the left side on her body was one large scar that spread up to her ribs and down under her pants. It nearly came to the center of her belly. It was splotchy and inconstant, like there wasn't as much damage in some areas as others and it wasn't new either, it was no longer the shiny pink of new scars. It wasn't the kind of scar that she would now have from the arrows or the knife. It was from something else.

On the other side were two holes in her skin. The poison was visible as it crept up her veins turning the area dark. It was the same with the cut that ran along her middle. Aragorn moved on and dripped the medicine in to her wounds. Her shakes slowly stopped. The Gondorians stared at her face wondering if it was all in vain. If they had been too late. Then slowly the colour started to come back to her lips and cheeks, though she wasn't out of the woods yet. Aragorn started to wrap her wounds for they were now clean.

Dun, Dun, Dun! He's still alive! I know that some of my readers are doing a little happy victory dance and I dance with you. This was a chapter that allowed me to show that Annwn is vain and likes pretty things, like colour and her vest, and that she isn't totally epic, uric-hai can still beat the snot outa her. It was so fun to write! Does that make me a bad person, that I like using my main character as ork fodder? Hmm?

P.S. Amygdala is the part of the brain that controls emotions, particularly the fight of flight responses. You can blame university for this reference.

I made a booboo! Lorena Mkinit is actually spelt Loreena McKennitt. Sorry guys. I missed that typo.

Review thanks to Archer117, Kyonkichi9 (I almost did forget the Captain part! XD), Lira-leigh54

Favorite Story thanks to Archer117, Idril Nenharma and Vagabond Soldier.

Torture red