I do not own Lord of the Rings or any of the characters.
Goblin Town
He began rapping the pommel on the ground, hard. Finally, after nearly a minute, there was a creaking groan of wood, and the floor fell away. He dropped, landing in a stone trough and beginning to slide down it, barely able to stay on his feet. The slide jumped from one to the next several times, winding and weaving deeper and deeper into the mountain before abruptly ending over a platform with a spiked, wooden fence around three sides and a stone-and-wood platform leading away from it.
Rhanir landed on his feet just as goblins, short, bald, pale goblins, rushed at him from along the path. Their faces were deformed, squashed and with overly large eyes, looking something like one would draw to poke fun at someone rather than the viscous creatures they were. They wore little more than loincloths, and wielded crude stone and wooden weapons, and when Rhanir moved to meet them, drawing his second blade as he did, they provided very little in the way of resistance, allowing him to carve his way through them with ease. He flipped his blades around to reverse grip as more and more goblins began to rush him, only for him to smirk. He stepped forward, knocking a spear aside with one blade and split the goblin with the other blade. As he continued his spin, he held a blade vertically behind him, another spear deflecting off of it and missing him before that goblin also fell. A pair of arrows flashed toward him, only for him to lean aside, avoiding them and severing a pair of goblins' necks before sheathing one blade and drawing his bow and an arrow as he sidestepped several more arrows. He slashed a goblin charging him with a crude sword across the stomach, then kicked it backward into several more, knocking them down and knocking several off of the walkway, then crouched, several arrows streaking over him as he quickly returned fire.
He immediately loved his new bow. The snap of the string was as musical as a harp, and the string shimmered softly as he drew it back. The bow itself was clearly enchanted to increase its range and the force with which it hurled arrows, because each arrow that found a mark punched through it completely. He fired several arrows into the goblins rushing him, more than a couple of the arrows exiting one goblin only to kill another behind it. One even protruded far enough from the back of the second goblin's chest as to stab into another's throat.
Rhanir slung his bow again, once again drawing his second blade, and charged into the goblins. He carved his way through the massive group easily, the narrow pathway making their excessive numbers more a hindrance than an asset. He passed quickly over stone platforms and wooden bridges. He removed heads, lopped off limbs, pierced torsos, and knocked goblins from the edge of the cliff. And all the while he made for a clamor up ahead where he could hear voices shouting amid the cries and shrieks of the goblins. And then, he wasn't alone. Without warning, or any sound to announce his approach, Gandalf the Grey had reached him, using his staff and an ancient, elven bastard sword. As Gandalf spun and parried and struck out at the goblins, his grey robes billowed about, and the goblins shrank back in fear of him. And then, Rhanir passed him, redoubling his efforts, and began to spin and dodge between the goblins, shredding them rapidly and clearing the way for Gandalf. Up ahead, someone began to sing, his high, annoying voice cheerily singing about torturing someone, identifying the caves as Goblin Town. And then, the singing stopped abruptly.
"I know that sword!" the same voice shouted fearfully, only just ahead of Rhanir and Gandalf and around a bend in the path. "It is the Goblin-Cleaver!"
The shrieks of goblins continued, along with the sounds of someone, or several people, being beaten.
"The Biter!" the voice continued. "The blade that sliced a thousand necks! Slash them! Beat them! Kill them!"
"We're out of time!" Rhanir snapped, spinning clockwise on the spot as a half-dozen goblins charged him, only for his blades, his right held in standard grip and the other in reverse grip, to brush them aside, opening large seams in their flesh.
"Behind me!" Gandalf instructed, Rhanir obeying instantly as Gandalf began to mutter under his breath.
And then, there was a blast. And explosion of blinding, white light and pure force, sending goblins flying and blasting a huge, wooden construct up ahead from the path. All of the goblins fell silent, staring in the direction the blast had come from in silence, the dwarfs likewise staring, though they lay on the ground where the goblins had been preparing to execute them. Slowly, goblins and dwarves began to rise slowly, all staring at Gandalf in a silent awe.
"Take up arms," Gandalf instructed calmly. "Fight. Fight!"
On this last yell, reality returned for all before Gandalf. The goblins lunged to their feet, but Rhanir and Gandalf had already rushed forward to face them. Gandalf was powerful and lethal, slaying the goblins equally surely with his staff as with his sword, but Rhanir was quick, precise, and efficient. He twirled and stepped around the goblins and dwarves, his blades carving through any goblin within reach. Before the goblins nearby could gather themselves from the sudden and deadly onslaught, the dwarves had regained their feet and collected their weapons, rapidly slaughtering the last of the goblins on the wide platform with them. The leader of these goblins, one who was nearly double the dwarves' height and more overweight than a troll with his chin fat hanging down to his stomach, lumbered forward, shouting in effort and swinging his club, formed from a wooden post with a skull on top, at Thorin, only for Thorin to snatch up a curved, elven, half-leaf sword and blocked the club. As though their roles had reversed, the goblin was repulsed with a resounding collision, staggering away and smashing through the railing of the platform, plummeting out of sight.
"You're late, elf!" Thorin snapped as Rhanir swapped his left sword for his bow, firing an arrow past Thorin and into a goblin charging him from behind.
"My apologies!" Rhanir called back, spinning and slashing a pair of goblins behind himself before firing an arrow through another goblin to kill one that was pinning the overweight dwarf, Bombur, to the ground. "It took me a while to get that giant to drop me off!"
He traded his bow for his other sword again as countless more goblins flooded toward them from deeper into the mountain. Gandalf called for them all to follow him and fled along a path, the dwarves, who were surprisingly effective at committing violence for most of them clearly not being warriors, leaving a trail of destruction along the path Gandalf had chosen, the wizard ushering them along. Once Rhanir had made sure the dwarves could effectively carve a trail without him, he swapped both of his blades for his bow again, following the dwarves while rapidly loosing arrow after arrow back at the goblins chasing them, stalling them effectively by killing or tripping one in the lead in order to trip those behind them. After a bit, he turned to the front as the group was forced to split up and instead drew his original dagger. Its curved blade shone pale blue, as all elven blades did, and became a flash as goblins began to drop onto the path around him, only for him to spin and duck around their strikes, felling one after another with the dagger. Finally, he sheathed it as the two groups of dwarves met back up. Rhanir grabbed three arrows and turned, loosing all three back the way they had come just as several swarms of goblins reached an intersection in the many wooden paths. The arrows each killed two, and the sudden addition of corpses in the goblins' path started a chain reaction of goblins tripping over one another along all three paths, countless plummeting to their deaths.
"Good shot!" Gandalf commended.
"I can see why you were sent with us!" Dwalin admitted.
"There's more to it than that!" Rhanir responded, drawing the first half of his right sword in time to deflect an arrow without ever having looked at it, then leaning aside from another, allowing it to miss them all. "I'll explain once we're out!"
He once again slung his bow as goblins began to scramble over the sides of the pathway around them. In the bow's place, he drew his two daggers. Goblins rushed at him, but he all but danced through their ranks, opening their arteries and opening new seams in their skin with each fluid movement, allowing him to not slow his forward progress at all as he slaughtered the goblins around him. Ahead of him, the dwarves were making short work of any goblins in their path, Thorin and his older, white-haired second-in-command Balin, proving themselves to be especially deadly. Finally, they reached a dead end, a section of wooden platform held aloft by ropes but ending in a drop. However, before the goblins could catch them, Rhanir slashed the ropes tethering them to the path they had just left, the platform swinging out away from the goblins instantly. They reached a platform opposite the cavern's chasm from the goblins and three of the dwarves leapt to it. However, before the rest could, they swung back the other way. A half-dozen goblins leapt onto the platform, lunging at Rhanir, but he shredded their flesh with his daggers, sending them plummeting into the darkness below as more of the dwarves leapt to safety.
"Jump!" Gandalf ordered him as the last of the goblins fell, and Rhanir turned, hurling himself toward the dwarves as one of them cut one of the ropes holding the platform, allowing it, too, to fall into the darkness.
Gandalf held out his staff, and Rhanir caught it, kicking his legs and swinging himself forward, then released the staff, sailing high over the path and landing lightly. They continued to flee, more and more goblins meeting them, and several leapt onto Bombur, clinging to him. However, before they could harm him, Rhanir spun around him, slashing them all across the spine and killing them, allowing Bombur to continue to run. As Rhanir followed, Gandalf blasted a low section of the ceiling with his magic, forming a boulder which rolled down a sloped section of stone pathway, flattening a dozen goblins before falling off a cliff. They all chased the boulder down, then turned left onto the next section of wooden path, and Rhanir traded his daggers for his shortswords again.
"Why do you keep switching weapons?" One of the dwarves, Óin, a grey-haired dwarf with parts of his beard braided into a pair of loops, yelled to him over the chaos of their battle.
"Different situations and surroundings, different weapons!" Rhanir called back, spinning and willing several goblins as they landed around him.
Off to the right, goblins were swarming along a bridge that connected to their path up ahead, but when Rhanir passed the bridge at the back of their line, he slashed the ropes, dropping the bridge. One leapt at him from the left as he did, but he ducked and spun, allowing the goblin to pass over him and allowing an arrow to breeze past his head, missing him by an inch, and sending it stabbing into a goblin ahead of him instead. Then, he turned, snatching up a goblin blade from the ground and hurled it into the archer behind him, knocking it from the path. Finally, however, they were forced to stop on a three-story bridge as the massively overweight goblin leader burst up through the bridge ahead of them. On either side of the bridge, a horde of goblins gathered, surrounding them, and Rhanir turned to those behind them, Gandalf standing before the massive goblin.
"You thought you could escape me?" the goblin asked, swiping his club down at Gandalf, then out to his right, forcing Gandalf back. "What are you gonna do now, wizard?"
Then, Gandalf stepped forward, jabbing the end of his staff into the goblin's eye before slashing him across the stomach. The goblin fell to his knees, holding a hand over his wound.
"That'll do it," he admitted, just before Gandalf cut his throat.
The goblin collapsed, and his monstrous weight immediately began to make the bridge buckle. Rhanir sighed, sheathing his swords and drew his daggers instead, bracing himself by stabbing them into the beams running along the sides of the bridge's walkway. Sure enough, a moment later, the bridge broke free, falling onto the steep, rocky slope below. They smashed through layer after layer of Goblin Town, their bridge miraculously staying upright and together as they smashed through more than a dozen bridges and walkways. Then, finally, they reached the bottom and dropped into a narrow crevice, the ends of the bridge skidding down the rock on either side as it slowed. Then, as it crashed down at the bottom and finally collapsed, the dwarves were all buried in the debris as Rhanir landed in a roll beside it and Gandalf landed in a heap at his side.
"Well that coulda been worse," Bofur, a dwarf with an old, dark grey hat whose sides stuck stubbornly out to the sides, commented as Gandalf stood.
As if on cue, the massive goblin crashed down atop the pile of debris, all of the dwarves shouting in pain and exasperation.
"You've got to be joking!" Dwalin complained.
They all began to extricate themselves, but as they did, Kili, a handsome, lean elf with straight, black hair, Thorin's nephew alongside his brown-haired twin Fili, stared up the slope they'd just come down.
"Gandalf!" Kili shouted in warning.
Rhanir looked up, sighing at the horde of goblins charging down the slope like a flood. He swapped his daggers for his shortswords again as the dwarves redoubled their efforts to free themselves.
"There's too many!" Dwalin said. "We can't fight them!"
"Only one thing will save us!" Gandalf stated. "Daylight! Come on!"
He helped the last of the dwarves free themselves and ushered them down the only path available to them, a tunnel at the bottom of the crevice, as Rhanir loosed arrows up into the goblins, doing what he could to trip up the horde. Finally, the last dwarf was free and fleeing, and Rhanir slung his bow, ripping his swords from the ground and fleeing after them. Finally, they found an exit into a thin wood on the mountainside and ran down it, all instinctively seeking to put as much distance between themselves and the cave as possible before the setting sun left them vulnerable again.
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