Chapter 12
aka
Afterword
"Well I say we go now!" King Thror thundered.
"Great, let's go," Losse Seldo answered mildly.
King Thror had expected resistance or at least debate, and was momentarily at a loss - caught off-balance, so to speak.
"What?" he managed.
The newcomer sitting by the King looked amused but remained silent.
Losse clarified, "there is a time for everything, and the time for this expedition does seem to be now. I think it is no coincidence that Gandalf," Losse nodded towards the newcomer sitting next to King Thror, "just happened to arrive this morning. I believe you've changed focus again."
"What?" The king asked again.
"Remember our discussion on the Rings of Power," Losse answered. "Their major function is to grant the wearer what he wants most - not all at once or dramatically, but by subtle and gradual shifts in luck and circumstances. Usually they corrupted those wishes too."
He held up one finger.
"The Elves wanted magic to be as it was when the world was young - plentiful and powerful. And, in small enclaves around their Rings, they have that. They also managed to avoid the corruption, largely through what we call 'earplugs' as we said."
Losse raised a second finger.
"The Humans - the race with the shortest lifespan - wanted long life. They got it, in the form of undeath. They became the ring-wraiths. And, having neither the Elves' magic, nor the Dwarves' stubbornness, they were totally corrupted and enslaved by Sauron."
A third finger went up
"The dwarves who received Rings of Power - including you, King Thror - wanted gold. And you got it - not by some obvious magical event or single dramatic windfall. You just happened to notice the right things or get the right ideas such that you ended up mining where gold was. You consistently dug in the right places and got the gold you wanted. Maybe the magic of the rings somehow made more gold accessible too - we're not sure. The dwarves mostly resisted corruption from the rings by their own legendary stubbornness. But they did have some effect - more greed, jealousy and envy of riches."
King Thror harrumphed and Losse hastened to add, "But that's academic, since most of the dwarven rings are destroyed, Sauron is rumored to have the only 2 or 3 that remain other than the one you wear. And you, King Thror, are unique."
Thror smiled.
"You, King Thror, are the only individual ever, so far as we know, to change what he most desires, as far as the Rings of Power are concerned."
King Thror looked quizzical, and Losse continued. "At first, you wanted gold, and got it. Then something happened and you decided you wanted magic weapons. And you got those. Ancient legends - true ones at that - were remembered at the right time to try them. Circumstances aligned to give you opportunities to try the legends, and to help you stumble upon new discoveries as well."
He paused in thought for a moment, then added "and come to think of it, circumstances also aligned to give you access to knowledge the Elves had about magic weapons as well - no small feat that. Maybe the rings are even more powerful than we thought..."
He trailed off for a moment, then continued. "Anyway, at some point, you seem to have changed focus - altered what you desire most, at least as far as your Ring is concerned - again. Now you seem to desire to be a Legend Slayer. You killed Shelob. You killed Smaug. You killed a Ring-wraith.."
"Two, now," Thror interrupted. "Another showed up late last night. I dispatched him as easily as the first. Apparently he hadn't been told about the first and still thought he was invincible." He snorted.
Losse Seldo grinned. "And now you want to kill Sauron aka the necromancer. And the moment you decide you want that, circumstances just happen to look very good as far as achieving it. Sauron's location is known, and within easy marching range of both a dwarf army and an elf army, which can actually work together now. His forces are depleted. You, with some help from us, have taken out armies of his orcs and spiders, and also defeated 3, uh, now 4, of his major servants. And on top of that, Gandalf just happens to show up."
The elf, uncharacteristically, thumped his hand on the table for emphasis. "I think it is as clear as can be that now is the time to do as you've suggested - send an army of dwarves from Lonely Mountain and an army of elves from Mirkwood, along with any humans willing to come from LakeTown to march to Dol Guldur, meet Gandalf and his wizard friends there, then take out Sauron, any followers he has left, and raze the fortress for good. I think we would be unforgivably stupid if we did not!"
Councilors around the room nodded. Gandalf smiled.
That was it. They went.
Except for Durog.
Somebody had to stay and keep Lonely Mountain safe from any random monsters that may show up.
It was judged that nobody could do it better than he.
In fact they were so confident of his abilities - despite all the wreckage Smaug had wrought - that all the able-bodied dwarves but him were taken along with the army.
Durog had only the infirm, the very old, the very young, etc to help him while the army was gone.
Durog had each dwarf do what they could, and a lot of little contributions added up.
They averaged a tenth the labor from each, half as fast, and for a quarter as many hours per day as regular workers, but by pacing themselves, in teams, each doing what they could, they got some important work done.
So despite having only weak and inform workers, he still had two slam-doors repaired, some cleanup and repairs done in the main tunnel, and Shelob's tank repaired before the army returned.
It wasn't much, but it was enough.
That was proven when a size 4 dragon attacked, and got drowned in the main tunnel.
They didn't get any more magic weapons from that event though, since the ready rooms for doing that were not yet repaired.
But they did have the slam-doors winched back up and ready again before the triumphant army returned, bringing with them some very young trolls for Durog to 'ranch' like the spiders.
Durog had a new motto posted in his command center. It said "Make your own luck".
The elf army came with the dwarf army, both to share in the celebration and to give the elves a chance to view Shelob's corpse, since only a few hundred had come to see it before.
In that goal, they were largely disappointed: what was left of the body wasn't very recognizable.
When Smaug died and King Thror mentioned taxidermy, the elves nearby had described the method they used, which, it turned out, was easier to do and made the preserved bodies last a lot longer.
So King Thror had had that done with Smaug.
Consequently, the materials the dwarves normally used for taxidermy were available for other purposes.
And Durog had used them, in a way.
The dwarves had found that treating a hide with a certain mild acid preserved it nicely. But they stored that acid in concentrated form, to save space, and in that form it was not mild at all. The concentrated form was strong and volatile - it reacted with just about everything.
They had learned that, frozen, the concentrated acid was not volatile at all.
And they had a convenient way to freeze things - just by keeping it outside on top of Lonely Mountain, where there was always snow and ice.
Dragons are big, so it takes a lot of material to preserve their hides.
And dragons arrive unexpectedly, so a large quantity of material needs to be available at all times if you wanted to avoiding upsetting the king by not preserving his trophy.
So Durog had a lot of concentrated acid stored frozen on top of the mountain.
And that's what he had filled Shelob's rebuilt tank with this time.
The blocks of frozen acid may have damaged the corpse, half of which was still flat where the huge stone war-hammer had rested on it, a little when they were tossed in the tank on top of the body.
Being frozen solid, before she and the acid both melted may have damaged Shelob's body a little more.
Being dissolved by acid surely had damaged Shelob's body considerably.
But it wasn't until, as they later compared notes and figured the times, Sauron got killed - or discorporated anyway - that Shelob finally spasm'ed, gasped, finished dying, and then rapidly decomposed thereafter.
Not coincidentally, at that same moment, King Thror's spear became significantly more magical than it had been: It had taken Shelob's magic when her own poison killed her after Thror stabbed her in the poison gland, but that magic had not activated while Sauron was holding her spirit unnaturally in her body. He'd been doing so in preparation for fully reanimating her, but never got that chance.
Durog heard all about the battle from the various warriors after they returned.
The dwarves, elves, and a few humans, had encircled Dol Guldur at some distance, to prevent any escape.
Then they had closed in.
They knew Sauron was present.
They remembered the last words Shelob had spoken, against her will, about how to destroy Sauron.
And so they had brought, in addition to normal army gear like weapons, everything they imagined might help, including every variation they could think of of wax tadpoles, vinegar (one had doused himself in it), fresh snow, and sauteed beets.
It wasn't a siege - the fortress had been in ruins for a long time. With sieges, you need to bring war machines and siege engines to break holes in the walls so you can get at the enemy to fight them.
But Dol Guldur had plenty of holes in its walls already.
So as the armies approached, they had a steadily-increasing fight with Sauron's minions - mostly orcs but also some corrupt humans and miscellaneous unusual monsters.
Warriors involved in those fights could go on for hours telling tales of them.
But in fact, Sauron's forces started the battle at a severe disadvantage, having already been seriously depleted in recent other fights at, or on the way to, Lonely Mountain.
It could still have been an epic struggle.
But Sauron had a group of wizards - the White Council - to deal with, and so could not assist his forces.
And the various unusual monsters were handily defeated by the many dwarves armed with magic weapons - Thorin, Durog had heard, had personally defeated a spider 4 times as large as a horse, and a troll at least 30 feet tall, and to do it, in addition to mirrors for redirecting sunlight, he had used one of the Dragon-Forged spears Thror tempered inside Smaug, making that spear Triple-Forged and quite powerful indeed, since it was now the 2nd weapon capable of regenerating its weilder.
The 2 Nazgul who were present were both drawn to King Thror - they bragged, before they died, that by defeating him, the most worthy opponent on the field, that they would drive the armies from the field in terror.
It didn't work out well for them.
One ring-wraith died immediately.
The other was the legendary Witch King, the leader of the Nazgul, who was said to be unkillable by man.
Some assumed that meant unkillable by males.
Some said that meant unkillable by humans.
Some said that included 'mankind' which was all humanoids and included dwarves and elves.
Some said it was actually a baseless generalization people assumed to be true because nothing yet had actually killed the Witch-King.
Whatever it was, he took many hits from Thror's spear without dying.
That fight went on and on, with King Thror's speed, agility and weapon skill keeping him alive and unwounded, while potent magic kept the Witch-King alive - as far as undead things are alive - and not very bothered by his increasing collection of wounds.
But the moment, as they later calculated it, that Sauron's body was killed, King Thror's spear started glowing with a new light. After that, his next hit on the chief Nazgul killed it, by turning that Nazgul's own resources against him, just as Losse Seldo had described how the supernatural poison would work.
Perversely, that greatly upset King Thror.
He had wanted to kill Sauron himself.
And he was disappointed and frustrated when he heard that, though Sauron's body had been killed, his spirit still lived, had escaped, and would eventually build a new body, as it had before, when it had enough time to gather strength.
Thror's spear, with the full magic of Shelob's supernatural poison, could have actually killed Sauron, body and spirit, by turning his own prodigious resources against himself. But he could not get that supernatural poison effect while Sauron had been keeping Shelob from being fully dead.
Thror had grumped about it all the way back, "I could have killed Sauron, if only I had first killed Sauron! That's injustice of cosmic proportions!"
Mostly people ignored his grumping and happily rehearsed to each-other the various great scenes from the battle, as well as speculations like whether the Witch-King had technically been killed by Shelob or himself, and also what exactly the wizards with Gandalf had done.
The wizards weren't telling, although Gandalf did mention that vinegar actually seemed to bother Sauron.
All that was known was that, as a group and while the opposing armies were busy fighting each-other, they'd snuck in to the inner fortress, faced Sauron in a magic duel, many versus one, and killed him, though his spirit had escaped.
Thror's disappointment was less than it could have been.
He had something to be very happy about at the same time.
The wizards had presented him with 2 more Rings of Power, formerly given to the dwarves but recovered by Sauron.
The elves had given him 'earplugs' to go with them, and Thror's son and grandson now wore these.
They had high hopes for the future.