"Why are we stopping?"

"Where are they."

"What?"

"The Ringwraiths," the dragon hissed, creeping closer to the end of the pass with as much stealth as he could manage, "His armies! Their numbers have been cut by more than half!"

There were only four of the Nazgûl visible from their location, all of them closely orbiting Mount Doom, and half the orcs and almost all their siege weapons were gone, leaving the Plateau of Gorgoroth looking ominously empty.

"Minas Tirith didn't look as if it had been attacked."

"They must have passed it by. But where would they go?"

Then, as one, "The Mountain."

Smaug leaped into the air, abandoning stealth in favor of speed. The Ringwraiths didn't notice him, too far away to spot the dragon's shadow against the greater darkness of night, and so they fled Mordor unimpeded. The dragon dove to gain speed, swooping so low that there was barely room for his wings to beat between him and the ground, then ascended so high that the hobbit found it difficult to breathe.

They flew through the night and well into the next day, arriving at the Mountain a scant half an hour after Sauron's armies did. The battle had only just begun when Smaug barreled down through the clouds, aiming straight for the Witch-King.

The Fell beast shrieked and tried to evade him, but it was too small and too slow, its rider too large and heavy compared to the dragon's. This time Smaug's jaws closed completely over the back half of its body, biting it cleanly in half, then he let the fire build in his belly. As they fell together, he turned and blasted the Witch-King with a thick gout of dragonfire, as strong as he could make it.

His allies cheered at the sight of him taking on the Ringwraiths, and redoubled their efforts against the orcs on the ground. The Nazgûl shrieked and swarmed around him as the Witch-King crumbled to ash, gone but not dead – not yet.

But as the dragon got his wings back under him, turning to fight the others, Bilbo saw something that made his heart skip a beat. Time seemed to slow, and his vision tunneled, zeroing in on the ballista swinging around to point at them. And nocked to the massive siege bow…

"Smaug, look out!"

The dragon didn't question him, just pulled in his wings and dropped like a stone. The Black Arrow whizzed past them, missing them by inches and vanishing into the blue sky, and Smaug roared in fury. Yet as he turned to search for that ballista – and the others no doubt present – the Ringwraiths swooped in again, shrieking. The dragon snapped at them, then banked sharply to avoid another Arrow, Bilbo holding on for dear life.

Below them, the dwarves and men pushed hard and overwhelmed the ballista closest to them, keeping the Arrows but setting fire to the siege engine itself. One down, nine to go.

Smaug roared and dove, and breathed out a long stream of fire into the ranks of orcs, taking out two more ballistas. One got off a shot before being destroyed, but the Arrow just skipped off his scales. Bilbo whispered a quick prayer of thanks to the Valar, and also to Eru, and begged them to protect his dragon, his Heart, during the battle.

Another Arrow hit the dragon's shoulder, but went spinning off into the void, barely scratching his armor. Smaug roared in fury none the less, and went for that ballista next. This one he smashed with his tail as he passed, ascending once more to fight the Nazgûl. One of them was close enough that he closed his mouth around it, the ends of the Fell beast's wings flapping futilely against his teeth. The dragon brought all of his incredible bite force to bear on it, crushing it between his jaws, then flipping it around to do so from another angle, then another, then another, before blasting it out of his mouth with a stream of fire.

Then he shrieked, his wings suddenly pinned to his sides by a spell cast by all three of the remaining Ringwraiths. The dragon began plummeting out of the sky, writhing in the grip of the dark magic and trying to angle himself to minimize the impact.

There was a loud explosion like cannon fire, and the air around Smaug was blasted away, then came rushing back. It was Gandalf; he had thrown off the Ringwraiths' spell, but already they were gathering for another attempt. Smaug dropped to avoid it, weaving through the battlefield low to the ground.

The dwarves and men pushed hard again and overwhelmed a second ballista, but this one they did not destroy. A heavy guard took shape around it, Kíli at the helm of the siege engine. He only managed to get off one Arrow, but that Arrow caught the enemy unaware, and pierced a Fell beast and Nazgûl both. The Wraith dissolved before it hit the ground, but its mount wasn't so lucky, its body breaking on hard stone. It shivered once and lay still.

Orcs on the western side of the army began dropping like flies, elven archers and swordsmen emerging from Mirkwood. The archers kept their distance but launched volley after volley into the enemy ranks to cover the swordsmen as they closed the gap between them and the orcs.

The armies of dwarves, elves, and men linked up to form a wide V on one side of the orc army. On the opposite side, Smaug began breathing wide semicircles of dragonfire, each one making the wall of flames thicker and thicker. When he judged the band wide enough, he broke off to pursue the two remaining Ringwraiths while the allied armies began driving the orcs back into the fire.

The Ringwraiths tried their trip again, but this time Smaug saw it coming. By the time they locked on, he was only a hundred feet from the ground. He landed heavily amid the orcs, crushing the sixth ballista and the dozens, if not hundreds of orcs around it. The dragon's wings were still pinned to his sides and so he could not get up to do battle, but – while ungainly – thrashing this way and that to send orcs flying and snapping at everything in reach proved to be an adequate substitute.

Bilbo, meanwhile, plastered himself against Smaug's back and held on tight. He was quite certain that the dragon had forgotten about him in his desire to defend the mountain and his hoard (which was only partially true; though that was at the forefront of his mind, the dragon still took care never to roll over and crush the fragile hobbit on his back), but he dared not try to get down. He was safer where he was, though only marginally.

At last the spell relented, the Wraiths dueling with the Wizard. Smaug pushed himself up, then whipped around, crushing hundreds of orcs with the swing of his heavy tail and sending hundreds more flying. He roared loud enough to make Bilbo's ears ring, and swung his tail again, killing still more orcs.

Though the allied armies had taken casualties, too, by that point less than a third of the orcs remained. There were far less organized than Azog's armies had been, though they had more powerful weapons. Many of them turned and fled, deciding to take their chances with the fire and trying to find a way around.

Smaug remained on the battlefield long enough to make sure that none attempted to turn back toward the Mountain. Then he hissed and leaped back into the sky, harrying the one remaining Ringwraith away before angling back towards Erebor. He was only vaguely aware of horns sounding, and the distant shouts of Thorin Oakenshield roaring, "Open the gate! Let him pass, let him pass!"

The doors swung open at his approach, dwarves and Men (and the occasional Elf) scurrying out of his way. He climbed down bridges and ledges, staircases and halls, down to where most of the hoard still lay.

The instant he sank into the gold, he was calm again, and heaved a massive sigh, eyes drooping shut. The hobbit took that as a sign that it was safe to climb down, and fumbled for the straps of the harness with shaking fingers.

His feet hit the gold and crumpled immediately, but he caught himself against the dragon and lowered himself to the ground.

"Are you all right?" the dragon rumbled, "Were you hurt?"

"I'll have some interesting bruises for a while, but otherwise I'm fine." He leaned against Smaug's side, his scales still hot with the fire of battle. "Are you all right?"

"Yes." Like most of Girion's Arrows, two had struck their marks but skipped off his scales, leaving only the lightest of scratches in his armor. Smaug sighed deeply, and shifted to curl around the hobbit in a wide circle. "I need to speak to Gandalf, or perhaps Lord Elrond or Lady Galadriel."

"About what?" Bilbo asked, meeting his gaze, "What's wrong?"

"I have been thinking," he hummed, "Do you remember that game that Rosamund would play online with Gerald's son?"

"It was Greg, and I think so. The Elder Scrolls Online, right?"

"Yes, that's it. The previous game, Skyrim – one part of it involved a dragon who had overcome his nature through meditation."

"The one on top of their Mount Everest, yeah. I vaguely remember that. Rosamund got really angry when she heard David killed him in his game."

"Paarthurnax, yes. I cannot say whether that method will work for me as it did for him, but we won't know until we try."

After a moment of thinking back, Bilbo asked, "Wasn't he a pacifist?"

"He was, but even he stood and fought when the world was threatened, and I will do the same."

A/N: PAARTHURNAX MY BEAUTIFUL CINNAMON ROLL TOO GOOD FOR THIS WORLD TOO PURE
I swear to God I almost jumped my brother when he said he killed him as part of the Blades quest
FUCK THE BLADES