"Essence…" Her head was spinning and her eyes felt heavier than melded steel; no matter how much she tried to open them, they seemed to resist her. Her mind was exploding with a fierce pain and a heat that she remembered from someplace. She forced her mind to focus on a single thought, and although it was excruciating to do so, she soon realized where she was.
"Essence…" The voice breathed on the back of her neck, toying with her, and once more she tried to force her eyes open. She prepared herself for the violence of Mandos yet again, prepared herself for the heat that was sure to follow the voice. She stopped trying to move, remembering the crushed bones beneath her. Essence recalled the pain, and would be ready for it this time.
But strangely, nothing came. The light of fire turned from red to a brilliant white light, and instead of the heavy feeling she had possessed only moments ago, she began to feel light. Her eyes snapped open, and although she was once more unclothed, she felt powerful; a wind whipped her black hair around, stripping it of the goblin's stench and the oil from many day's worth of dirt. The filth from her face and skin was wiped from her face, leaving her clean and new. She stared forward at the light, and although it burned her eyes, she could not look away.
"What is this…?" Her voice was hesitant and quiet, mirroring the lack of noise around her. In fact, it was silent, and the white light shone down on her like sunlight streaming through trees.
Suddenly, a band of gold light pierced her chest and an unfathomable amount of pain rippled through her body. She let out a scream, her head tossing back, the wind still whirling around her. Her entire body felt as if every single bone, tendon and muscle had been snapped and shredded; blood seemed to pour from every crevice and opening her body held. Her heart felt as if it was going to burst from her chest, breaking her ribs and sending tendrils of blood and muscle into the air.
Then suddenly, the pain was gone as quickly as it had come. She felt a new silence envelop the room as she slowly descended to the ground. She landed on the floor with a renowned strength, and her mind finally processed what had just happened. Those were her healing powers—the ones Mandos had gifted her at her birth. The realization that she had never yet been so close to death astonished her—and the fact that Mandos, the Lord of Death had saved her, astonished her even more. Before her mind could comprehend the rest of the happening, Mandos's voice spoke again.
"Essence," it whispered, and she saw something black emerge from the white and gold light. "It is not yet your time."
"My time?" she asked, yet as he approached, she felt a sense of calm and no need to obscure herself from his eyes.
"Time for you to join me," he said, his voice much gentler than the last time they had spoken. "Continue your life. You will join me when the time is right." Essence opened her mouth to ask him when that time would be, but he began to disappear. "You will arrive in danger," he said, his voice fading. "Use your new strength—be prepared." The black figure completely faded, leaving Essence alone in the golden light.
New strength? What had he meant? The light around her began to fade as well, forming the shape of blurred trees. Essence stared at them curiously, but soon her eyes began to weigh down once more. She allowed them to close and felt herself fall into unconsciousness.
"Lady Essence!" A man's voice was yelling at her loudly, and her eyes opened; she jolted up and darted around blindly until she found focus on an old man's face—Gandalf's face. She began to smile at him in greeting, still somewhat groggy from her dream, but his large hand grabbed her arm and picked her up.
"Gandalf?" she cried, staring at the tall man as he lifted her up onto a tree branch. What was happening? She must have fallen asleep but now there were fires everywhere and yelling dwarves and some sort of screeching…
She looked north, over a hill, just in time to see an orc pack over the hills, riding atop wargs. She gasped—how had the dwarves managed to nearly escape the goblins, only fall into the trap of a pack of those viscous creatures?
"Climb, Essence!" Gandalf yelled to her, and she sprung up, grasping a large tree branch in her hands and pulling herself up. She watched as the old man nimbly lifted himself into the tree. "Higher!" he called as she pushed herself to another branch, watching the orcs descend upon them. Panic wrapped itself around her throat as she watched the dwarves barely escape the wargs, pulling themselves into trees nearly seconds before they would have been killed.
She watched as the dwarves and the hobbit climbed further into the trees, the wargs jumping to try and snatch them in their jaws. Essence only pulled herself higher and higher, Gandalf behind her. They were in the very last tree, almost off the cliff. "Do not look down, my Lady," Gandalf said, still working his way up. Essence had already made that mistake—if they fell, they would all perish.
She looked down at Gandalf, who had almost reached her height in the trees. He reached out with his staff and cradled a moth in the pointed tip of it, and brought it close to his face. He began whispering things in a language she didn't understand to it, and then watched the moth fly away with a hopeful look.
"My dear Essence," he said, so softly she could hardly hear him. "We may survive this yet." She would have smiled in promise with him if a pale blue and scarred orc had not just risen above the hill. He was on a large white warg, holding a crude axe—but as she looked nearer, he wasn't holding it; it was attached to his arm. He let out growl that sent shivers down Essence's body. She had been enslaved in the company of orcs before, but never had she seen one so fierce and cruel as this one.
He began to speak in his own language, and though Essence only caught the very basis of the foul words, like 'fear' and 'father', she knew they were meant to be feared. He spoke Thorin's name, then Thrain's, and she knew without seeing him the anger that was on the leader of the company's face. He spoke again, this time, Essence heard the word for 'kill', and fear began to run through her body once more.
The wargs began to jump taller into the trees, causing many of the dwarves to climb higher than they had been, and the trees began to sway under their weight. She watched as the wargs nearly tear off the feet of many of the dwarves, and then Gandalf began to pull himself higher.
"Climb, my Lady," he urged. She did not question him, and pulled herself aloft. "We'll need the lightest on top." Before she could ask why, she heard an awful crack—as she cast her gaze aside, she saw the first tree was beginning to uproot. It would soon fall upon the next, and create a domino effect…
"Gandalf," she whispered, her sweaty hands clutching the branches harder than before.
He never answered her, because the first tree began to uproot, falling into the next tree, and the dwarves travelled with it. She stared, amazed at the skill of their ungraceful bodies; a ghost of a smile brushed her face despite the horrible conditions.
"Climb!" Gandalf yelled at her, shaking her from her stupor. She was near the top already, and used a burst of strength to pull herself up without steady footing. She placed her foot on a thin and shaky branch, hearing the cracking of the trees as they fell. One more tree and all fourteen members of the company would be upon them. She pushed herself up for the last time, grasping a limb and nestling into a clump of branches at the near top of the tree. The old man was perched just under her as the entire party jumped toward their tree. Essence held her breath as each of the dwarves grasped a low hanging tree branch, groaning and yelling. Beneath them, the wargs circled the wavering tree.
The pale orc in front of them laughed, and Essence bent down to speak to the wizard.
"Lady Essence," he said, his face troubled but voice calm. "There is nothing you can do to help. This is a dwarvish fight, and a dwarvish fight alone."
"Many creatures of this land are frightened of the Lord Mandos," she said, and Gandalf reached to the side and grabbed a large pinecone.
"Not orcs," he said, and he began to blow on the pinecone, his staff lighting it. "The orcs hold no fear of damnation, because they are already damned." She cringed at the thought and he threw the pinecone to the ground, setting the forest floor ablaze. She presumed the orcs who had captured her but not killed nor hurt her had been too daft to realize this.
She watched as Gandalf threw various flaming pinecones down the tree, being caught by other dwarves who in turn lit more. Soon they were surrounded by a circle of fire, keeping the wargs away and killing some as they were set aflame. The dwarves cheered and yelped in victory, but Essence did not; she sensed an impending doom, and hoped beyond all hopes that whatever Gandalf had done with that absurd moth would aid them, or at least keep them alive. Essence closed her eyes as she heard a nervous yell from a dwarf below and prayed to the Valar, hoping Mandos would have some pity on her situation.
"Essence!" she heard a yell from the wizard under her, and she clutched the tree as tightly as she could, heading the wizard's warning as she felt it fall downwards. There was a series of shrieks from many of the dwarves as they fell nearly from the tree, barely hanging on as it tipped almost over the edge. Essence felt her stomach drop as she was cast nearly over the edge by the sheer force of the tree itself. She and two other dwarves screamed Gandalf's name at the top of their lungs, and the wizard looked to each of them. A look of terror passed over his face, then quickly disappeared before he spoke.
"Hold on tightly, my Lady," he said as her thin tree branch swayed in the wind. She began to feel it cracking, and a look of pure dread crossed her eyes. "Be strong." And with that, he tossed his staff to the two falling dwarves, saving them from plummeting from the tree as they gripped the strong material.
Essence cried out again as she felt the twig she was holding on to begin to crack, and fumbled madly for another bough to hold on to. The girl closed her eyes, her palms becoming clammy, and pictured the king of the dead in her mind. At least when she died, she knew she had a secure place of happiness in the Halls of Mandos; at least she would be free.
You will never be free, said a voice inside her mind, and she gasped aloud, almost falling from the breaking twig. If she were to fall, she would fall into the canyon of sharp rocks; perhaps she would break her neck or her skull and die quickly.
Your death will be a slow one, the voice spoke again. You are not ready to stand by me in the halls of judgment. You will not die, squealing like a pitiful creature. You will die proudly, or you are not worth my time. Essence's vision went dark for a second, her head falling back and her grip slackening on the tree. She began to fall, and vaguely heard Gandalf scream her name, but everything seemed to be going in slow motion. Mandos appeared in her mind, his golden eyes, like hers, ablaze and angry.
You will not disappoint me again. His mouth did not move but she heard his voice very, very clearly.
Essence felt a strong shove from behind her, and suddenly she was being thrown back onto the tree, past Gandalf and many other dwarves as she finally reached a stop nearer to the middle of the trunk. Essence sat up rapidly, her hair flying into her face. Despite the smell of grime and burning flesh around her, Essence's hair still held a flowery scent from when Mandos had healed her. That thought brought her back to the present, along with a herd of dwarves rushing down the tree. She was nearly thrown down once more as one of them nearly ran her over, and as she looked forward towards the offender, she realized it was the blonde dwarf, Fili. He didn't give her a second glance as he ran the rest of the way down the tree to fight the orcs. Essence gripped the stub of a broken branch and shut her eyes tightly in the smoke and the noise, hoping to stop her head from spinning. She needed a serious break from all of this fighting.
Already, the girl had scratches all over her arms and body from the stubborn tree branches, and her head felt as if several bricks had fallen in unison on top of her skull.
"Lady Essence!" Gandalf yelled from behind her. She looked back, and he was struggling to hold up two of the dwarves who were near falling to their deaths in the canyon. "Go to Thorin!" She nodded quickly and pushed herself up as best she could, her compassionate healing instincts taking effect.
Essence, on her weak legs, reached the base of the tree, and a fallen Thorin finally came into view. He was lying on his back with a bloody wound across his face, and Essence began to run toward him without a second thought. The small girl reached him in few strides and collapsed by his side, her hands reaching his face. She began chanting loudly, her mind guiding her hands to the wounds on his torso.
A screech that sounded of a bird seared through the air, and Essence began to chant faster. Her eyes closed and her head fell back as she spoke the words she knew so well. Gold light began to form underneath her fingers, and she felt a tiny hitch of breath from the previously unmoving man beneath her.
Essence suddenly let out a scream as a large bird took both Thorin and her into each of its claws, dragging them away. The healer was in no shape nor position to struggle against the large being, although she did, and in vain. As Essence realized that no amount of fighting could free her from the enormous Eagle, she held onto her dignity by no longer screaming out loud.
"Worry not, my Lady," Gandalf said, the eagle carrying him flying under her. "You are safe now." Essence returned the well-meaning smile of the man beneath her as he flew off, and kept the smile as she felt her body relax slightly at Gandalf's comforting comment. If only it was the truth.
A/n: So for those of you who read the description, it's changed slightly! I realized that my story plan from a year and a half ago is not the same as it is now, and so I had to tweak a few details to make the storyline work.
Thank you so much for reading, PLEASE review, I absolutely adore the feedback!