Her injured leg burning as she spun about, the end of her staff taking the disgusting little goblin before her about the face, Poppy bit back a groan of pain. Twirling her staff about once more, she heard the crunch of bones right before her quarry crumpled to the ground after a final hit to the throat. Chest heaving, she had to take a knee on the damp, ragged rock of the tunnel before her limb simply refused to hold her any longer.
Some part of her knew she should be revolted by more than just the sheer foulness of the twisted, dead creature on the ground in front of her, but for whatever reason she couldn't muster it. She was killing things, killing creatures that breathed and thought and spoke…just like her. That should be troublesome. Yet it wasn't. She wasn't sure if it was because she was just too tired, too in pain to worry, or if some other part of her knew that she was doing nothing wrong.
Seeming to read her mind as Glamdring sliced through the chest of the final goblin in the group they had ambushed, Gandalf knelt before her as she panted. Gently patting her cheek after wiping the blood from his sword, he said, "I will pass to you the same wisdom I passed to Bilbo on this journey, little Anna, though I think you know it more than he already. True courage means knowing not when to take a life, but when to spare one." Smiling at her, he squeezed her shoulder before helping her up, he added, "Your light is strong enough to know an evil nature when it sees it. Do not let regret over their lost lives burden you, my dear."
Returning his smile weakly upon taking his hand and leaning heavily against him before shifting to her staff, she nodded, "We have far more important lives to worry about, don't we."
"Indeed, we do." Bringing his staff up toward his face, he gently blew into the crystal at its top. A warm white light began once again to emanate from it, filling Poppy with a bit more courage. Their way through the little-used tunnel that thankfully had held only half a dozen goblins lit once again, they pressed onward, neither moving to sheathe or put their weapons.
Deeper into the mountain they went, the smell becoming far more…potent as they did. Wrinkling her nose after coughing against the foul air, trying to breathe through her mouth, Poppy queried, "Is this a good sign?"
"Yes," Gandalf replied, glancing down as wooden slats appeared beneath their feet, the tunnel becoming a proper path. "Goblins are quite fond of putrefaction. I should say we are nearing the true location of their home. For all that they love tunnels, they are not ones to live in them."
The pair was silent for a few steps, but Gandalf could feel the question rising from his little companion. It had been weighing on her mind ever since she first heard the goblins. He did not need to have power akin to Galadriel's to know that Bilbo and the dwarves were foremost in her thoughts.
"Will they still be…alive?" The concern and anxiety were strong when she turned her blue eyes toward the wizard, "Will they have killed them already?"
Clearly unhappy at not having an answer that could relieve the hobbit of her fears, Gandalf's voice was hesitant, "The only consistent aspect of goblins' natures is their malevolence. I have never encountered one with more on its mind than causing pain, though that could mean they chose not to harm the others immediately. Unless they have escaped, Thorin and the others are in danger. I can assure you of no more than…"
The wizard trailed off as they turned a corner and both were hit firmly in the face with the harsh, ringing clamor of metal on metal and the pounding of hundreds of distorted goblin feet. Eyes going wide, Poppy almost didn't catch herself before stepping out into the yellow light revealing the bridge-laden abyss before them.
Though constructed in the style of what she could only call a slum, the city was just that: a city. Toward the top were what looks like closely squished together rooms and homes. Like ants skittering about a tree trunk, goblins were appearing and reappearing positively everywhere. Some walked in their oddly dragging way on the walkways. Others were set upon swings that carried them across the vast emptiness in the middle.
And not a single one of them was quiet.
In the center upon a large platform that was built rather precariously between two outcroppings of stone, was a gaggle of them all screaming and squawking with excitement as an enormously rotund gathering of fat and boils that wore a crown sang with a wicked glee.
Voice almost leaving her, she glanced quickly to Gandalf, "Is that their king?"
The wizard only nodded, his fingers curling about his staff as his eyes narrowed. Poppy felt her stomach roil unhappily when she turned back to look at the gigantic goblin again. As unpleasant as Thorin could be some days, he at least had the air of a king. He was proud and strong and stubborn—not always in the best senses of the words—but he was a leader. That thing was disgusting.
Far across the way, terrible spiked instruments on wheels that she couldn't even put names to were being pulled toward the center. Face paling as she followed their intended path, she finally saw them.
All squished amongst the goblins in the center were her dwarves, all thirteen as she did a quick count in her mind. She couldn't spot Bilbo, but she pushed down the worry. He was probably just shoved behind some stinking, vile goblin that was screeching with excitement, being patted and manhandled as he was searched like all the others.
"Fili?" Her voice was so quiet, her ears had to strain to pick up her whispered word as she watched him be clouted across the face by a cackling goblin. When her dwarf's arms were restrained behind his back and he was unable to retaliate, the goblin hit him again.
The king still spinning about and conducting like he was a toddler with a nursery rhyme, he continued to sing.
Bones will be shattered,
Necks will be wrung;
You'll be beaten and battered,
From racks you'll be hung;
You'll die down here and never be found,
Down in the deep of Goblin Town!
Poppy's worry did not stay down long with words like that on the air. Indeed in a way it hadn't since two of Bilbo's cousins, Lobelia and Otho, had purposely pushed him into the mud to get him into trouble, she felt the fire of anger ignite in her chest. Her heart usually made her decisions for her. That she knew, but it chose to act out of love and loyalty for the most part. It had been a very long while since her heart had been provided the time to provoke the slow-kindled rage of hobbits. What she felt inside her was more than any of the anger she'd felt toward Thorin upon the occasions they had fought or even that she held in her heart for her father, the little part that had never forgiven him.
This was far more.
The pain in her foot and hand disappearing as she felt her blood heat up—her exhausted body could just wait; she had more important things to deal with—she looked up to Gandalf with narrowed eyes and declared, "This goes no further."
"Agreed, my dear. Together we—"
His following directives were cut off as the goblins began to frenzy, their screeching turning fearful instead of elated. Crawling backward, stepping on many of his subjects, the king cowered on his throne, shouting, "I know that sword! It is the goblin cleaver, the biter, the blade that sliced a thousand necks!"
As their king's hysteria rose, the goblins pulled out whatever manner of weapons they had and turned them on the dwarves to the horror of the still hidden pair. Unable to stop her feet as first Bofur was struck about the head with a whip and then Thorin was tackled to the ground, Poppy ran even as she heard Gandalf cursing behind her. With a final word of instruction, he shouted, "Close your eyes when it happens!"
"Slice them, eat them, kill them! Kill them all!"
In a final order, the goblin king screamed to the four soldiers holding Thorin bodily to the ground and the one standing above him with a knife, "Cut off his head!"
Struggling in vain, Thorin stared up at what would be his own death with a growl on his lips. Nothing else to do, no other way to fight his way out of this, he stared the blade and the goblin wielding it down as it came within inches of his face. Just as the goblin gnashed his teeth into a crooked smile, all that filled the dwarf's vision was the dark wood of a staff he knew well.
Swinging straight into the goblin's face, Poppy shouted with the effort as she collapsed his skull beneath the force of her staff. Taking no chances, she kicked the creature to the ground and swiftly stamped down on his throat with the end of her weapon. Twirling it twice more so quickly it sang as it cut the air, she had Thorin's other four captors removed in piles of pure bewilderment.
Looking far more like a terrifyingly fierce, albeit short, spirit of war than the hobbit lass he ordered away every day, what he could only assume was Poppy's ghost didn't even spare him a second glance as she rushed on, hitting everything without a beard that dared get in her way.
Before Thorin's mind had a chance to try and process anything more, light and wind exploded through the cavern, stunning everything in its path, including him.
Feeling the force of Gandalf's spell before she could see it, Poppy quickly covered her face with her staff arm, feeling the rush of air whoosh past and threatening to take her injured leg out from under her. Managing to hold strong, she blinked her eyes open to find a vacuum of darkness in the explosion's wake. Glancing behind as the light slowly began to return, she saw the silhouette of the wizard and felt herself smile for a reason she didn't quite understand.
Resuming her mission as goblin and dwarf alike started to regain their senses, she gave a swift crack to the neck of any goblin between her and the heap of Dwarvish weapons, Orcrist tossed unceremoniously to the side.
"Take up arms…Fight…FIGHT!"
Heart swelling with courage at Gandalf's words and the sight of all her dwarves rising with battle cries on their tongues, Poppy grabbed the first weapons on the stack and shouted above the din, "Gloin, axes!"
Tossing the long-handled weapons to the redheaded dwarf, she quickly grabbed the next. "Kili, sword!"
"Mahal bless me…" A stricken look on his face, the younger brother stared at her with wide eyes even as goblins and his kin swarmed around him. Blinking rapidly, as if trying to decide if what he was seeing was real or not, he watched as she made to toss him his sword. Caught halfway through raising her arm, a goblin had an arm around her neck with one of their guttural screeches.
Starting forward, he tried to get to her, to help, but she'd clumsily swung his sword about and rammed it into the goblin's stomach before he made it four steps. As the goblin collapsed to first its knees then to the ground in death, Poppy rushed forward and handed her friend his sword. Looking him straight in the eye with a smile, she ordered hurriedly, "I know I'm looking lovely, Kili, but stop staring and fight something!"
"FILI!" A great grin upon his face, Kili grabbed the hobbit's arm and pulled her through the fray with him, both using their free arms to wield their weapons. "FILI!"
Finally getting his brother's attention back from the three goblins he had just felled, Kili made eye contact just long enough before bringing Poppy in front of him. Just as Gandalf shouted for them all to run, Fili's eyes found the dirt-covered, slightly bloody, and panting hobbit in front of him. For a split second, it was clear that he didn't believe his own eyes...until blue eyes found his.
The smile that broke across his face clearly said she was still the most beautiful thing in the world as she beamed back at him.
A/N: Well, look at me going back to the way things used to be and getting two chapters out in a week! See what happens when I get my 20 page Protestant Reformation paper out of the way and decide that grad applications can wait a tiny bit. :) Stress is bad for the soul anyway.
Anywho, so it's not a whole lot of a reunion but we're on the path and yay, he knows she's alive and look at that rage of the Shire being activated. So, I must now go and talk to my advisor about previously mentioned grad school-hooray-so I leave with my usual: Thanks so much for reading, review if you wish, and I hope you enjoyed. :D
