Already out of breath Avaleina counted, "One, two, three, four, five, six-"

She spun around, on the verge of frantic. She thought she had everyone. She thought - "Where's Galdahon?"

The others looked around.

"The spiders…" Someone wondered out loud.

Before any of them could get any more out, she was already running exactly the way they had come.

"Ava no!" Someone screamed.

She didn't bother to leave the ground for the treetops, soon everything would be dead anyway. There would be no soul inside the bark to help her.

She needed to be fast. She needed to reach him before they crossed the border.

She needed to get him back before nothing could save him.

She couldn't hear a thing as she ran. Not her footsteps, or her heart, not even her ragged breathing.

The only thing she could feel was the pull and the push of the border as she drew nearer to its volatile mix.

Over the hill, past the magical border between Thranduil's power and Gol Dulrur's power, she watched them disappear over the hill with Galdahon alive and in agony.

An attempt was made at a deep breath, but her lungs might have done anything and Avaleina wouldn't have been able to tell.

She crashed through the barrier.

It burned every inch of her, and felt like the coldest ice all at once. Like the sun had been put in half of her, and the void of space in the other. It took her heart, but made it so she didn't need it. Nothing existed for a moment.

And then she fell to the other side.

Ringing and howling and laughing filled her mind. And it took her a second to realized she had collapsed to the ground.

Another second to realize the howling and laughing was coming from an orc heading straight for her.

With a numb body and mind, she managed to grab her bow and arrow, shooting him right between the eyes. He dropped.

She still couldn't hear the thud.

The laughing continued, smug like it knew something she didn't. This time difference, this time in her heard. But it had been exactly like what had spilled out of the Orc.

She shot the two others that were with him and then climbed up from where she had turned to kneel in the mud. Then the ran again.

It still didn't stop, and she could hear nothing else.

She slipped twice on the hill, plastering her completely in mud. It didn't slow her down.

Avaleina crested it, and everything stopped.

Galdahon was surrounded by spiders, circling, pushing each other to see he would eat him.

The voice stopped laughing enough to ask, 'Are you going to shoot him?'

It felt like everything stopped. She pushed against him with everything inside of her mind, but the voice wouldn't leave. They were on his land now. She was at his mercy.

Soon everything would all be his land, his mercy.

'Go ahead, shoot him. Kill him. Do it.'

One of the spiders seemed to be winning, she wouldn't be able to fight them all. She raised her bow.

'That's right, right between the eyes. Like you did be for. Don't be shy, I know you can do it.' She could hear the sneer in the intentions of the words. She felt it.

It was the only thing she felt.

And then Galdahon screamed, and it was so full of terror and hopelessness that it chased away everything in her mind.

Hands steady, she raised her bow and aimed. An apology her ears still would not let her hear slipped from her lips, and then she let go.

Right between the eyes.

She knew he was dead, and so she turned and ran. As that laughter filled her head again, "Good job, little girl. Now run back to your King and cry about the abomination you've become.'

She ran back through the barrier, she didn't even remember running down the hill towards it.

Everything was hot and then cold and then there was nothing at all.

0.0.0.

The room almost stopped spinning long enough for her to tell where she was. Almost.

"Of all the stupid and useless things my warriors have pulled over the years, this has got to be one of the worst, Avaleina!" Judging by the volume of Ferdan's yelling, they weren't in the healing ward.

The bed was too comfortable to be her on.

Without her permission, or even a warning her body went to be sick lurched forward where there was suddenly a bowl under her face, and a hand holding her hair, only to find there was nothing left in her to come out.

She collapsed back onto the pillows, eyes closed, "What about that time we lured a bunch of spiders with ourselves as bait in a little pit and set them on fire."

A cold compress was gently placed on her forehead, but Ferdan's voice was still stern, "No, this was still dumber."

"When we lied about visiting Beorn so could we hunt a pack of orcs?" Her voice sounded pathetic, even to her.

"Dumber."

"Dumber than fighting a dragon?"

She heard him stifle a snort, as a few covers were adjusted, "We were not talking about me, were we? Now go to sleep. You've been awake for a minute and a half, and you're already annoying me."