I didn't realize I left that last one on a cliffhanger, but you were all probably fine. :) Internet decided to be silly again, but here's the next chapter.
Thank you to all those that have favorited, followed, and reviewed! And read, of course.
Shelob began busily wrapping Frodo in sticky web. Sev's black blood thickened, surging and darkening. Shock exploded in her heart; it blackened her very thoughts with her sudden loss of ability to process.
"Noo!" She didn't have to think before her Elvish knife—not the Mordor dagger she had intended to grab—slipped from its sheath into her hand, and she hurled it at the great spider. It caught Shelob in the shoulder, and she screeched mightily. She didn't quite drop Frodo despite that, just shed the knife with an angry glare into the darkness. The weapon clattered on the stone.
Sev unsheathed Sting and tore across the ground. Her feet barely touched the solid earth. Leastwise, she didn't feel it. She lifted Earendil before her; everything within her burned. Her breath heaved. The spider finally spotted her, regarding the dark creature dismissively. Shelob did not wish to eat one with dark blood, but would appreciate an ally, even if they fed on the same things once Shelob was done with her.
"Put him down," Sev demanded, nigh seething. Shelob dropped him solid on the ground at last, getting impatient with this anti-creature before her.
Sev nodded assertively, breathing harder than running alone should have warranted. "Don't touch him again." She lifted Sting. "Now, go on, fight me!"
Shelob leaped from the entrance to the staircase, hissing and sputtering. Sev brought up Earendil with the sudden realization what she'd brought herself in to. The spider screeched and scrambled back, but didn't stay for long. Sev lunged with Sting and hacked at Shelob's leg. The spider dragged herself away, then grabbed at Sev's hand to wrench the blade from her grasp. Sev rolled and flicked Sting through the air again at the spider.
Shelob reached down to bite Sev, and the anti-creature kicked one of her frontal pincers, bending it back. Shelob shrieked as Sev lifted Earendil up into her eyes. She scrambled away, and while she did her foot collided with the glass vial. It flew away, and Sev didn't have time to go after it when Shelob came back. The light dimmed, cutting off Sev's vision for a moment.
The spider reached down again to bite Sev. Sev sliced the sword up close to her face, but missed and came down on Shelob's leg once more. Green blood trickled onto Sev's fingers, bonding with her own darker blood. Sev sucked in a breath as her energy channeled out to her skin surface and fizzled with the liquid on top.
Shelob sniffed the air. She reached forward abruptly, slamming her pincers around Sev's arm. Sev tried to twist away, but managed to swing Sting around and get the spider in one of her eyes. Shelob wrenched away from the anti-creature, and Sting went flying through the air with the momentum. Sev fell to the ground.
The spider decided Sev would be easier to taint unconscious, and so opened her stinger. She reached down to Sev, but the anti-creature rolled out of the way. The stinger made contact with the ground, and Shelob hissed. She stabbed repeatedly into the earth, and Sev rolled out of the way, one direction to another. She finally broke out from beneath the spider. Shelob backed her into a cliff, and she clambered up. Shelob snapped out at her, and while she did Sev dodged her, rolled down her back to grab Sting. Her fingers wrapped around the hilt, but the spider got to her too fast.
Shelob wrenched Sting away with a foot, then reached down and bit Sev's leg. Sev cried out; the spider's venom quickly began to bond with her blood, creating a predatory streak of instinct in Sev's mind. She would become destructive (and partially spider-like in appearance as well) like Shelob if she didn't hurry . . . or so Willation had told her. Without really thinking, she slipped the Mordor knife, her last weapon, out of its sheath and stabbed it up into Shelob's stomach.
The spider split the air with its shriek as it jolted away from Sev. The anti-creature lay gasping while Shelob battled the poison within her as well. The darkness in her system would not allow the poison to kill her, but it hurt terribly, and would leave a burning ache for weeks. Sev finally stood, convulsing slightly with the new blood in her system. She grabbed Sting weakly after discarding her Mordor knife. She slipped Earendil into her hand, and the light fought off her bonded blood.
She advanced on Shelob, jolting her back. Shelob scrambled away from the light, backing pitifully into her cave. She shrank away and faded into the blackness to remedy her pain.
Sev slumped, exhausted, to the ground. Her blood tried to clean itself, but to no avail. Chances were excellent she would feel that desire for the rest of her life, however long that would be. She resolved to make the agony as short as possible.
Then she remembered why she hadn't died yet.
"Frodo!" She shot to her feet and swayed on them slightly. Then she scooped up her Elvish knife and ran to his side. With her dizziness launched by Shelob's bite, she slammed into the cave wall on her way over.
The spider had finished wrapping him rather well. Sev lifted the knife to where his face would be and slipped the edge through the threads of web. They snapped easily at first, but the lower ones became harder to cut as the knife got sticky. Sev reached over frantically and grabbed her Mordor dagger; the poison sizzled and melted through the web. In her hurry, Sev accidentally pricked her thumb with the poisoned knife. She hissed and licked the blood from her skin . . . but the pain halted when she saw Frodo before her. He stared up into the distance, his eyes frozen open.
Sev shoved away thoughts of his fate, blindly hoping—wishing—that he would be alive.
"Frodo." She lifted him gently into her arms. "Frodo, it's Sev." She bit her lip as she raised her hand to brush his hair back; a drop of black blood from her thumb dripped against his pale cheek, and she fingered it away. "Frodo."
She lowered her head to his chest. His lungs were not moving, and she could feel no pulse. Her teeth sank into her lip as she drew back. She kept her eyes closed while tears flooded them; she couldn't let it out yet.
Sev lowered her cheek to his mouth and nose. He wasn't breathing at all.
"Frodo, don't leave me." She lifted him, shocked, into her embrace and began swaying slowly; his head slacked, lifeless, against her shoulder. She choked back a sob and squeezed him close: she was too late. She could do nothing. She felt desperate enough to drain him. She laid him back down and felt around for the wound, but she couldn't find it anywhere. She frantically began slicing away the webbing, feeling around his shoulders. She neatly avoided the Morgul stab, but she finally located a puncture in his opposite shoulder, closer to his chest than the Morgul wound. She slipped her hand over the sting from Shelob, and it began draining into her arm.
She hadn't even drained a good deal—certainly not enough to make an impact on his healing—before the poison took over, and her eyes grew almost entirely black. Predatory instinct flooded her. She reached down to bit his arm, take his life for herself . . . but in doing so her hand jerked away from his wound. She collapsed against his chest, and the lack of thrumming in his heart stabbed her with horrid realizati0n: she couldn't heal him. Despair flooded her even as she sobbed. She tore herself away from him, painfully gathering her weapons, and she threw Earendil into the sheath belt at her side. Her fingers gripped the ground. Stone crumbled in her hands as she realized what she had to do.
Sev approached Frodo again. She lowered her fingers around his neck and bent down close to him so that her cheek faintly rubbed against his. It was still warm, soft, but she threw her hopes down—he would soon be cold. When she pulled back, she held the chain of the Ring. Her eyes narrowed. It had killed him, and now she desired with every fiber of her being to destroy it. Her fingers tensed as she wrapped the chain around her own neck. She laid the chain against her cloak to keep the Ring as high up as possible. The closer it got to her heart, the worse off she would be. She shifted a little; the Ring would not burn her constantly, nor drain her permanently, only occasionally jolting against her neck. She winced at the sting and turned up to look at the tower leading to Mordor.
Her gaze fell once again on Frodo. She stared down at the ground, cutting back the emotion she felt. But he was everything to her, and he'd been taken in moments, moments that followed the greatest breach between them. She lifted him back into her arms. She felt sick—she couldn't leave him, not here.
Sev almost couldn't even process that he was dead. Memories hit her, moments of strength, sorrow, love, and everything in between. His life flashed before her eyes, everything she could recall—subsequently tears streamed down her face. She had to leave now if she wanted to get to Mordor. The rest of the world now lay around her neck, but that was not her burden, not in her mind.
"I love you, Frodo." Her fingers tensed around him. "I hope you know that." She softly brushed her lips against his, wishing he could have known. They were, again, not yet cold; she couldn't shake the empty hope that he was still alive. She laid him on the ground again. She would bury him when she returned, and then she would drain herself by his side.
She might never have had the strength to leave him if Sting didn't begin to glow nearby. Her gaze lifted, and her eyes narrowed. She leaped up and set the sword on a ledge. She spotted a crevice close to Sting and slipped into it, burrowing inside, testing out the size. Frodo would fit, and she could squeeze beside him as long as she didn't mind the tightness of it. She began army-crawling out of the compact hole, but she slammed into the side as she moved. Loose stone cascaded from the ceiling, crushing against her. Her breath whooshed out, and she could barely breathe any back in.
She heard orcs nearby. She scrambled against the rocks that trapped her. Don't touch him! You don't want anything to do with a lonely, dead hobbit! Fear flooded her. Leave the body alone! Don't touch it, oh, please don't touch it . . .
A group of five orcs came shuffling into view. Sev buried herself back in the rock so as not to alert them, hoping that maybe they really would go away.
One of the orcs halted the conversation when he spotted Frodo. He knelt down to inspect him. "Looks like Shelob's been having a bit of fun," the first commented.
Another orc, one with his tongue lolling out of his mouth, glanced up after prodding Frodo. Sev growled. Leave him alone.
"This fellow ain't dead," the orc said.
Sev's eyebrows drew together, and she managed only a breathless whisper. Tears stung her eyes again. "Not dead?"
"She gets 'em with her stinger," the orc explained, "and they go limp as a boned fish. That's how she likes to feed: warm flesh and blood." He glanced down at Frodo, then gestured to the other orcs. "Get him to the tower! Once we're finished with 'im, he'll wish he'd never been born."
The orcs lifted Frodo up and began carrying him away. Sev scrambled against the rocks frantically, trying to shout at them, get them to drop him. She almost told them she had the Ring, but no words would form. The orcs were out of sight by the time she had her breath back fully, about ten minutes later.
"Sev, you dimwit," she hissed as tears flooded her face. She shoved against the rock, and it scraped her skin. She sucked in a breath, but kept going. Eventually she managed to tumble out, but not without getting her arms scratched up by the stone. She reached up and hurriedly grabbed Sting. As she raced to the edge of the staircase, she was grateful she'd drained Frodo; the poison flooded her scrapes and cuts all over her arms, giving them an upper webbing of skin so she could carry on.