Chaos Unleashed: Part Two

by E4me100

The world has changed. With the absence of the Fellowship, Sauron's power has been growing in ways that none could ever have imagined. Destruction and doom are on the horizon, and with the assistance of Kaia, Kathryn, and Erin, the Fellowship must now race to complete the mission they once left behind. Part 2 in a series (obviously). Self-inserts. Not the plot you'd expect.

27. The Land of Shadow

Chaos Unleashed: Part Two

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Kathryn's POV

I screamed while stumbling along with the rest of the Fellowship, tripping over rocks, webs, and who knows what else as we scrambled to find our way out. Gollum was still with us, but it was pitch black without Frodo's light as a guide, and I had no clue where that huge-ass spider was, which freaked me out even more. All I knew at this point was to keep running, so that's exactly what I did.

We came around a bend in the tunnel, and I nearly collapsed with relief upon seeing a faint light at the end of it. Oh, thank God! The motivation of knowing we were about to finally escape this hell hole pushed me to run faster, and I shot down that final stretch as fast as I could, bursting through the exit with sheer joy. I dropped to my knees in the dirt and gravel, relishing the feeling of fresh air on my face. "Holy shit..." I took a deep breath, panting as I looked up at Boromir. "...What was that?"

"Shelob," he growled. "A foul spawn of Ungoliant. It seems that we invaded her home, traveling through there." But the look on his face shifted into one of raw anger, and in an instant he was practically on top of Gollum. "You! Your filthy lies got us into this mess! Where is my brother?!"

I blinked. Faramir? ...Oh, shit. At that moment, I realized that we were three short. Faramir, Kaia... My stomach flipped. ...and...

"Frodo!" Pippin suddenly exclaimed. "Where's Frodo?"

Immediately, panic exploded amongst the rest of us. We'd just lost our Ringbearer – and more importantly, the Ring itself. "What do we do?" Merry asked, eyes wide with fear.

"We go back." Boromir was quick to answer him. "We must; we cannot abandon them!" He started to head into the tunnel again, but Aragorn held him back.

"Wait," he said firmly. "Let us examine all our options first-"

"My brother is in there," he hissed. "I will not lose him to that darkness!" I winced as I stood up, understanding Boromir's pain. He'd already lost his father. Faramir was all he had left.

"Boromir is right," Gandalf spoke up. "We cannot leave them on their own. Certainly not when the Ring of Power is among them." The wizard turned to Gollum, who was wide-eyed and crouched low to the ground. "You will lead us back through the tunnel until we have found the others," he ordered. "We will move quickly and quietly, so as not to alert our enemy to our presence again. If all goes smoothly, we may yet make it out of this alive."

"Wait!"

Every head turned towards the source of the sound, faint as it echoed off the rocks. "What was that?" Pippin asked.

But I was more overjoyed than anything else. "Kaia?" I shouted back.

"Kathryn!" A second later, I saw her dark head pop up not far away from where we were gathered, and the biggest grin split my face as she hurried over to us, with Faramir and Frodo close behind. Before I could blink, she'd pulled me into a tight hug. "Oh, Christ. I thought I'd lost you."

"Are you kidding?" I pushed back. "I thought you were dead!"

"Faramir!" Boromir was also quick to reunite with his brother, scanning him for injuries faster than anything. "Are you hurt?"

"Thankfully not," the younger redhead replied with a cheeky smile. "We found our way out well enough." Frodo quietly shuffled over to where Gandalf was standing, looking rather overwhelmed.

"Did you kill the spider?" Pippin asked eagerly.

At those words, Kaia's face dropped, and I saw the venom in her eyes instantly. "No," she said darkly. "We didn't." Before I could stop her, she'd spun around and was rounding on Gollum. "No thanks to you, you lying sack of shit!" She swung, striking him and sending him back a few feet. "That was your plan all along, wasn't it?" she shouted. "Leave us to be eaten alive so you could pick through our bones and take the Ring for yourself when your little friend in there was finished?" She took another step forward, and Gollum scrambled back, cowering in fear as her hand moved towards her belt. "Did you ever think about what would happen if that didn't work out for you? Did you think I was joking when I said that I'd kill you if you hurt Frodo at all?" The fragile creature tried to jump away, but Kaia grabbed him, whipping out her knife and holding to his neck as she pinned him down.

"Kaia! That's enough!" Aragorn barked, taking hold of her arm and pulling them apart.

She glared daggers at the ranger, but released Gollum anyway, shoving him back harshly. "I keep my promises," she said, her voice dangerously low as she stared him down, "and you will pay for this one way or another. Remember that." She sheathed her knife, not breaking eye contact as the pitiful thing began to wail.

"Oh please, please, Precious!" Gollum covered his face with his hands. "We never meant to hurt Master! She lies, she does!" He turned now to Frodo, pointing in Kaia's direction. "We serves Master! We does not hurts Master!" He retched, crawling closer to the hobbit and pawing at his cloak. "Please believe us!"

Frodo said nothing for a long while, simply staring down at the thing. After what seemed like an eternity, he finally raised his head, matching Kaia's gaze in what I knew was his way of taking her side as he spoke. "We have to keep going. Mordor is close."

"NO!" Gollum shrieked, gripping the cloak like his life depended on it. "No, Master! Don't take it to him! The Precious must not go that way!"

"It's the only way," Frodo replied, looking down at Gollum as if seeing him for the first time. Without another word, he stepped away, allowing Gandalf to lead the way as we began to make our way out of the mountain pass and into the land of shadow.

oOo

Kaia's POV

Luckily for us, Shelob had given up chasing down her prey, making the rest of our journey through the mountain pass pretty straightforward. I clasped my hands to let Kathryn put her foot in them, grunting as I hoisted her up over a fallen boulder that blocked our path. Gollum hadn't thought to consider the fact that the majority of us couldn't crawl all over the sides of mountains like he could.

Just thinking about the godforsaken creature made my blood boil. As I turned and reached for my friend's hand to help pull me up and over, I caught a glimpse of the traitor moving ahead of us and scowled. I would've killed him right then and there, soaking my knife with his anemic blood if Aragorn hadn't said anything. It was times like that where I wished he wasn't such a damn goody-two shoes. I could've gotten rid of half our problems in two seconds if the guy would just let me do my thing. But as I scrambled over the rock, I shook my head, trying to stop myself from going into a fit of rage again. Suppress it for now, I told myself. Your moment will come. Just focus on moving forward now.

My feet landed on solid ground, and I nodded to Kathryn. "Thanks." But she didn't even acknowledge me, staring straight ahead with fearful eyes. I frowned, following her gaze, and what I saw took my breath away.

What lay before us could only be described as a complete wasteland. The dirt that made up the ground was almost as black as my hair, its color rivaled only by that of an even blacker sky above. Dust and smoke rolled across the lands with no definite source, and the air was rancid and stale. Off in the distance, one single peak shot up from the ground, occasionally spitting flickers of red flame up at the clouds. And just beyond that stood the one thing in all of Middle-Earth I'd hoped to never see in person: the tower of Barad-Dûr. Jet black, standing tall and menacing beside Mount Doom, with a single fiery light source at its top. I could feel its evil presence catching me like a pair of cold hands around my neck.

"It's him..." I heard Pippin whisper from beside me. "...It's really him..."

"Yes," Gandalf said. "The Eye of Sauron. Perhaps the greatest enemy this age of Middle-Earth has ever seen. And this is the decaying land he holds dominion over. Mordor." Everyone seemed to collectively shudder at the name.

But now I was focused on the ground again, noticing another significant obstacle. "Gandalf, those lights," I pointed to the masses of flickering torch flames that stretched across the land. "Are those Orc camps?"

Again, the wizard nodded. "Indeed they are, Kaia. And we must find a way to avoid all of them."

"Orc camps?" Boromir asked, jaw dropping. "That's impossible. There's got to be hundreds of them down there!"

"Thousands, more likely," Gandalf corrected him. "What else did you expect to find in a land such as this?" I almost laughed at his sassy response.

"But Mithrandir," Faramir also spoke up. "How are we to escape their notice? The path to Mount Doom leads straight through them!"

"The Orc's road, yes," he nodded. "It leads through the very heart of Mordor, which is exactly why we will not be taking that path." Now his wise blue eyes turned to Gollum, who, oddly enough, looked just as petrified as the rest of us from his perch atop a large rock. "Lead on, Gollum. Take us on safe paths, as far away from the Orcs as you can get." The creature hesitated for several seconds, struggling with himself before finally obeying orders and slipping down the mountain to our right. Not a single word was spoken from anyone as we all began to file after him, one by one. As Frodo passed me by, I noticed that his hand was clasped tightly around the Ring, and his eyes seemed much redder than before. He was covered in grime and dirt, looking worse than I'd ever seen him.

Kathryn snapped me out of my daze. "So that's it, then? We're just...heading down in there?"

I exhaled, flexing my fingers as I cast one more glance at the Eye. It seemed so far away, but I could feel the heat of its gaze like it was right next to me. "Yep. Straight into the pits of hell."

oOo

The trek through Mordor was just as horrific as I expected. Going down the slopes of the outside mountain range was hard enough, and I almost slipped and fell half a dozen times from the steepness of it, but I think I'd rather have to hike up and down that a thousand times before actually walking through Mordor at ground level. The feeling of dread was so thick and intense, there wasn't a thing I could do to shake it. With every step I took through the jumble of rock, dirt, and bramble, I felt like we would be spotted and ambushed. It was the most spine-chilling thing, walking through enemy territory in plain sight...nothing to hide us, nothing to protect us.

Thankfully, I managed to catch up to Frodo as we walked. You could visibly see the affect that the Ring was having on him now, being as close to Sauron as he was. "You doing alright?" I asked, glancing over at the young hobbit as I matched his slow pace.

His eyes flicked up to me, looking cloudy and bloodshot. "I've been better."

At that, I managed to crack a smile, but it quickly disappeared. "I'm sure. It's only been a couple hours and I already hate this place." I looked around, scanning the area for any signs of trouble.

There was a beat of silence, and then Frodo spoke again. "...I can feel his gaze..." I looked back at him, frowning. "His Eye...it's nearly on me!" He gasped, stumbling like he'd just gotten the wind knocked out of him, and I laid a hand on his back. "There's nothing to hide me...nothing to keep him away! He'll see!" His voice was high and panicked now, eyes wild as he raised his head to meet my gaze. "He sees!" His gasps become more frequent, until he was practically hyperventilating.

"Frodo. Frodo!" I grabbed him by the shoulders, shaking him slightly. "Snap out of it!He's not going to see you!"

"How do you know?" he shot back. I'd never seen him so afraid. "How do any of you know?!"

I stopped. "...You're right. I don't know. I can't promise you that Sauron won't see you walking around down here." He looked about on the verge of tears. "But I can promise you that he won't catch up to you. He won't ever hurt you in any way, or there'll be hell to pay for it. Because I'm still your bodyguard." I jabbed his chest with my finger, looking deep into his eyes. "I made a promise to you, Frodo. I promised that I would keep you safe, and I'm committed to that. If every single Orc in all of Mordor came up here right now – hell, if Sauron himself waltzed over, I would give every ounce of energy I have left into protecting you. You'll be safe, Frodo. I promise."

Those big blue eyes that had lost so much of their life stared shakily back at mine for several long seconds before he collapsed, wrapping his arms around me tightly in the strongest hug he could muster. I returned the embrace, relishing the brief moment of peace and knowing that all was forgiven.

"KAIA! Get down!"

A second after I heard the shout, I felt the searing heat on my back. Every ounce of my body told me not to turn around, but for some goddamn reason I did it anyway, a scream dying in my throat as I stared straight into the blazing inferno that was the Eye of Sauron. I couldn't hear anything, could barely see anything but that blinding light, feeling it hit the deepest part of my soul with a blinding pain. I felt myself slump forward and hit the ground with Frodo beneath me, faces pressed into the dirt. I was convinced that the heat of Sauron's gaze was going to burn the clothes off my back and sear my flesh, but after several long, agonizing seconds I felt the heat leave me like a ten thousand pound weight had been lifted from my shoulders.

As I slowly sat up, ears ringing, I saw Aragorn running towards us from where he'd dropped to the ground. "It's gone, Kaia," I heard him say. "The light has passed."

I found myself gasping for breath as I sat up, pulling Frodo with me, who looked deathly pale. "He...He saw us?" I asked, fear gripping me.

Aragorn hesitated for just a hair too long. "...I do not know." But one look in his eyes told me the answer was yes, and instantly I was on my feet, still clinging to Frodo like a lifeline. "We must move quickly," the Ranger said, gesturing ahead of us. "Mount Doom is not far off now."

I looked up at the volcano. He's right. It can't be more than an hour away. How the hell have we been avoiding all the Orcs so far? "Okay," I nodded. "Let's go. Come on, Frodo!" I gave the hobbit a gentle push, just enough to get him moving again. "We're almost there..."

oOo

Kathryn's POV

I took another drink of water from the leather flask I'd been given, trying not to take too much at once while I walked. We were steadily drawing closer to Mount Doom's entrance now, having worked our way about halfway up the slope. But with every step we took, it seemed to get harder. Every one of us was utterly exhausted, struggling to keep up our energy and make it through this final stretch. The last leg of our journey had taken its toll on me mentally, too – my anxiety and paranoia had reached new heights from being this close to our enemies. I wanted out. I desperately wanted out.

Boromir stumbled next to me, and in an instant Faramir was at his brother's side, helping him keep his balance. "Are you all right?"

"No, no!" the older one pushed Faramir away, breathing hard. "I don't need your help!" But a second later, he was on the ground again, unable to stand, literally crawling through the dirt in an effort to pull himself forward.

I crouched down beside him. "Boromir, come on," I pleaded. "You're exhausted. Let us help you."

"No!" he cried weakly, no strength left in his voice. "No..."

I hovered nearby for a moment longer before hesitantly standing, not knowing what else to do. I looked at Faramir for help, and it was clear that seeing his mighty brother like this pained him. He was watching Boromir closely, worry written all over his face. His blue eyes lifted to meet mine, and neither of us had to say a word to know what the other was thinking. Boromir was weak. The Ring was sucking the life out of him. Faramir looked absolutely broken as I stepped forward, looking at him sadly. "I'm sorry," I whispered. "I should've done more-"

"There was nothing you could do," he replied. "I was a fool to think that I could have prevented any of this in the first place."

"No," I reassured him. "You did the right thing; you were a good brother to him."

But he only shook his head, turning to watch Boromir again. "A good brother, perhaps. But he needed a great one."

My frown deepened. "Faramir-"

"There's no more to be done, Kathryn," he cut me off. I could've sworn I heard his voice break. "Thank you." Before I could say anything back, he walked away. I watched as Faramir approached his brother, lifting Boromir off the ground and draping an arm across his shoulders in an attempt to help carry some of the weight.

I felt a lump rise in my throat as Kaia stepped up beside me, looking just as worn out as I was. I kept my eyes trained on the two men, trying to ignore the tightness in my chest. "...I failed them."

Kaia sighed. "No, Kathryn. You didn't. None of this is your fault." She was also watching them as they shuffled forward together. "You didn't ask for any of this to happen."

I swallowed hard, the stress becoming too much as I rubbed tears out of my eyes. "...Why did we do this, Kaia?" My eyes flicked to her. "We don't belong here in Mordor, on dangerous adventures like this." I swore under my breath. "I should've just stayed in Mirkwood. Erin and I both would've been safe there...alive and well. We could've found you and brought you back to live with us, and everything would be fine. None of us would be in this mess right now. Maybe more of us would still be alive, too."

Kaia thought about it for a minute before answering. "Yeah...maybe. But we also would've been abandoning the Fellowship to deal with our mess." She noticed the tears slipping down my face and pulled me into a quick, tight hug. "This has been hell for both of us," she said softly. "But we don't really have the option of pussying out now."

She let me go, and I took a deep breath to compose myself before looking back at her. "...Let's finish this." Kaia nodded once, and together we turned back towards the slopes of Mount Doom.

oOo

Kaia's POV

It happened almost too quickly for me to follow. As Kathryn and I turned around, there was a shout, and I looked up to see some kind of struggle ahead. Someone had pounced on top of someone else, and it took me all of two seconds to figure out who it was. My eyes widened. "FRODO!" I bolted, charging up the mountainside as fast as my legs would carry me, a white-hot fury building in my chest as I identified the person that had jumped him. As I reached them, I drew my arm, back, swinging as hard as I could and nailing Gollum in the back of the head as he clawed at the hobbit.

"Master is a LIAR!" he was shrieking, hardly even fazed by my hit. He had finally snapped. "A cheat! Master is false!" He was wrapping his hands around Frodo's neck now, and I heard the shouts of others as they ran up behind me.

"Get the FUCK off of him!" I screamed, grabbing Gollum by the waist and pulling hard. "Leave him alone!"

Still, he ignored me, and Frodo was now gasping for air under the creature's fierce grip. "The Precious...will be ours! Filthy little hobbitses! They stole it from us!"

"Get OFF!" I screamed again, striking him in the back of the head a second time. This one was enough to make Gollum loosen his grip for a fraction of a second, and that was all I needed to rip him away from Frodo. We both tumbled backwards, and as soon as I was back on my feet, the thing charged me. I didn't even bother reaching for my knife, instead settling for a good kick in the ribs that send him flying further down the hillside.

Feeling like he was far away enough, I spun towards Frodo again, running towards him and grabbing him by the arm to help him up. "Frodo! Frodo, are you okay?"

"Get off me!"

I was completely caught off guard as the curly-haired hobbit shoved me back. His eyes were wild, and his hand was clasped tightly in a fist at the base of his neck. "Frodo, what the fuck? What are you doing?"

He stared at me, breathing hard. "...I will not destroy it."

I frowned for a second, confused, but it clicked in my mind soon enough. "Don't you dare! Not when we're this close!" I started towards him.

But the insanity in Frodo's eyes was clear to me now, and a positively chilling smile stretched across his face. "The Ring is mine."

"NO!" I lunged at him, but he was too quick. In the blink of an eye, he was gone.

A roar like I'd never heard echoed across the lands, and I felt the familiar scorching heat of the Eye on my back almost instantaneously. He'd found us. The Ring had finally made its presence known. "FRODO!" I screamed, eyes frantically sweeping the area around me.

"Kaia!" I whipped around at Aragorn's shout and nearly fell over. Orcs. Dozens of them. The torchlight of the camps below were swarming, and already I could see them rushing up the side of Mount Doom to meet us. I looked around at the rest of the Fellowship, who all looked equally petrified. They've found us. We're dead. We are so dead.

"What do we do?" Kathryn cried, eyes locked on the enemies that were quickly gaining on us.

All eyes turned to our proud leader, who was speechless for a moment. This was the absolute worst case scenario. Frodo had fallen to the Ring. Sauron had discovered our position. An army of Orcs was running us down, and we had hardly any weapons to defend ourselves with. Aragorn looked at us, the Orcs below, and back to us one last time. At first, he seemed like he was about to give up...but then his steely blue eyes locked with mine, and I saw the shift happen. Hopelessness was replaced with determination. His hand flew to the hilt of his sword, drawing it quickly as he stared us down. "...We fight."

Without a moment's hesitation, I pulled out my own knives in response, turning and running back down the hill with him as the others followed. "FOR FRODO!" Aragorn screamed, the Fellowship echoing his battle cries. I snarled at the Orcs as we charged them head-on, roaring in fury as we collided with them hard. Legolas' twin knives went straight into the heart of the first one I saw, going slick with black blood as I ripped them out. I'm going to water the ground with their filthy blood.

oOo

Kathryn's POV

I stayed behind Boromir and Faramir as we met the Orcs in battle, trying not to think too much as I swung my sword left, right, up, down, and every other possible direction, cutting enemies down as I went. Every ounce of stress, anger, and bitter resentment I'd been brooding over for the past month fueled me as I fought, attacking more aggressively than ever. For me, this wasn't just any old battle. Now I wanted vengeance. One Orc ran up to me, swinging his blade high, so I ducked low and slipped past him, lashing out behind me and cutting him deep in the side. Another tried to jump out at me from the right, but I saw him coming, and offered him a blade to the throat as a greeting. They kept coming, and I kept fighting. Adrenaline pumped through my veins, and everything became a blur as I slashed my way through the sea of black and grey.

Suddenly, a strong force slammed into me from behind, sending me stumbling forward. Surprisingly, I kept my footing, spinning around to see that it had been an ally, not an enemy. "Faramir!" I cried, blocking an attack from another Orc.

He spared a glance over his shoulder, spotting me. "Kathryn!" His sword quickly made its way into the stomach of his opponent as I drove my own weapon across my Orc's shoulders, knocking him over. "How do you fare?"

"Oddly enough-" I dodged another blow from the side "-quite well!" I lashed out again, catching an Orc in the shoulder. "You?"

"I think that this is absolute madness!" He ducked when a particularly nasty Orc swung for his head with a mace-like weapon, swinging low and hitting the foul thing in the ankles. "But for Frodo, I'll fight to the death!"

"Smart man!" I called out, kicking at the next Orc to come at me. I missed, but so did he on his swing, allowing me to spin to the side and hit him hard in the skull with the blunt end of my sword. Speaking of which... "Where is he?"

"I don't know!" Faramir responded. "But wherever he is, we must find him!" Another Orc ran over, and we took this one out as a team, with Faramir blocking his attack while I dove forward and nailed him right in the gut. "Where is Kaia?" he asked, pulling me to my feet. "I thought she would be with you!"

I froze, suddenly realizing that she'd disappeared from sight. "Oh, shit! I don't know!" I spun blindly in a circle, starting to push my way through the crowd. "KAIA!" I shouted, cutting down more Orcs as I went. "KAIA!" I can't lose her. If she gets hurt...Oh fuck, I can't lose her! "KAIA!"

oOo

Kaia's POV

I was pretty sure that both of Legolas' knives would be permanently stained black from the amount of Orc blood that coated them. Again one of them tried to attack me, and again I jumped back, causing him to miss before stumbling forward, allowing me to plunge both blades deep into his chest. As that Orc slumped to the ground, I paused, looking around to try and get a sense of where I was. Somehow, I had worked my way over to the edge of the chaos, where there were less Orcs running around. After stabbing one more of them and bringing him down, I turned and ran back up the hill, turning my focus to some of the strays that were getting close to Merry and Pippin. I saw one running straight at the two hobbits who stood side by side, throwing rocks to try and knock enemies out. With a battle cry that rivaled even Aragorn's, I took a flying leap forward and jumped on its back, jamming one knife into its neck and the other into its bicep. It fell with a strangled groan, and I jumped back to my feet, nodding to the two hobbits as they openly gaped.

All of a sudden, a horrific scream sounded from even further back up the mountainside, and I stopped short, turning towards the source of the sound. What I saw terrified me. Frodo was now visible again, but doubled over on the ground, screaming in pain from a wound I couldn't see. Without thinking, I sprinted towards him. "FRODO!" I called. "FROD-"

And then, out of nowhere, something slammed into me from the side, completely knocking me over and sending me rolling down the hill. I grunted in pain as I landed hard on the rocks, tasting metal in my mouth as I spit blood out of it, but once I rolled over and saw who'd attacked me, the pain meant nothing. Absolutely nothing could compare to the anger that flowed through my veins. "YOU!" I shrieked, shaking at the sight of Gollum's smug face crouched in front of me. "What did you do to him?!"
He cackled, the malicious look in his eyes revealing his true colors. "Stupid girl! He's not our Master anymore, no! WE be the Master!"

I shoved Legolas' knives back into their sheaths, ready to settle this the old fashioned way. "You remember that promise I made to you, Gollum? The warning of what would happen to you if you hurt Frodo? Twice now you've nearly gotten him killed." I took my stance, ready to pounce just as much as he was. "I think it's time I returned the favor."

With an ear-piercing shriek, he was on top of me, clawing at my face, just as he'd done to Frodo not twenty minutes ago. Moving quickly, I got my legs underneath him and kicked, pushing him off me and stepping back as he circled around like a panther to attack me again. But I wasn't going to give him that second chance. I ran straight at him, tackling him to the ground and pinning him beneath me, clenching my fists and punching him one, two, three, four, five times in the face before he was able to wriggle out from underneath me. "You BASTARD!" I shouted, feeling the bone in his nose crack beneath my fist. "You filthy piece of Orc shit!"Gollum scrambled back, blood pouring down his face. "I never trusted you for a second. If we'd done it my way, you would've been dead a long time ago!"

But in the middle of my ranting, he caught me off guard, jumping high enough to wrap his entire body around my head. The collision send me down, and I cried out in pain as my head connected with rock, neck jerking back. Before I could come to my senses, his teeth were buried in my shoulder, drawing a scream from my lips. I reached up and dug my nails into the first thing they came in contact with, which must've been something important judging by his cries of pain. Gollum let go, and I pushed away, getting my feet back underneath me as quickly as possible before charging at him again.

This time, he leapt for me as well, and I landed another solid punch in his stomach as he grabbed me by the ears, pulling me forward with my momentum from running. But because of the angle he'd hit me at, we fell with him on the bottom again, and I didn't hesitate to use the force of gravity to my advantage as I headbutted him mid-fall.

Knowing that the wind had been knocked out of him, I used the few precious seconds that I had to grab him and flip him around by the shoulders, pulling him tightly against me by locking my right arm across his throat and keeping my other hand against the back of his shoulder.

He struggled, gasping for air, but no mercy came as I reached back with my left hand to grab a knife, getting right in his ear as I spoke. "Fuck you for every single problem you've caused me. If Middle-Earth has a hell...I hope you burn." And just as quickly as I'd pinned him, I stuck a knife deep into his back.

He screamed in agony, writhing in pain. "NO!" his strangled voice came. "Vicious girl...she kills us...Precious!" His infamous retch came one final time as he coughed up blood, and then nothing as he went limp.

I stepped away from the body, staring down at it for several long seconds, not fully believing that he was really dead. The only thing that drew me away was the sound of battle still raging on behind me. We're not finished here just yet. I watched as the blood pooled around the forsaken creature, removing my spare knife from Erin and wiping it clean before turning and walking away.

A/N: What an ending amirite ;D ;D ;D

In all seriousness, I do hope I did Gollum's death justice. I didn't want to draw it out for too long...but I felt like the feud between him and Kaia was a big part of her personal arc that deserved an epic face-off to end it all. Hope you liked it (and the rest of the chapter, too)!