Hope ↠ LOTR

VI. Grief

Legolas and Athena stood on a rock, watching as a group of wargs and their riders came out from the distance and made their way towards their position.

"Go back to the others," he told her.

"Not without you," she sternly responded to him, leaving no room for any argument.

And he did not argue with her, instead he readied an arrow at the same time that she did and shot at their incoming enemies. They released their arrows simultaneously and she felt satisfied when the warg she aimed at toppled to the ground and crushed its rider beneath its body.

"Athena!" She heard her brother call out to her and she turned to see a collection of horses galloping towards them.

Unlike Legolas, she was not nearly nimble enough to swing herself on top of Hasufel so Aragorn slowed down his movements as he neared her and reached his arm out, allowing her to grasp a hold of it and pull her onto the back of the horse. She continued to shoot at them from where she sat, leaning over the side of Aragorn and firing an arrow that killed an Orc upon impact while those around her drew their swords.

The wargs and horses ferociously collided against one another, knocking riders from both sides off their animals. Hasufel remained strong against the onslaught, pushing through and carrying his riders through the battle. Aragorn swept his sword along the side, killing one of the hideous beasts on top of a warg while she followed up and used her arrow to dispose of the warg that had carried on, the battle raging on around them from all angles.

Hasufel abruptly turned around and made way for another target, Athena focusing on the enemies around them while Aragorn made haste to save Gimli who was being targeted by a warg. He rushed forwards and grasped onto a spear that was stuck in the ground, throwing it and killing the warg that fell with a thud onto the pile that Gimli was already buried underneath. Her attention went over to him when they rode past, wincing as she could only imagine how he felt underneath the pile of corpses that were crushing him.

They were both knocked from their steed when a force crashed into them; a warg had launched itself at them and thrown them both from Hasufel and to the ground. Athena fell to the ground with a grunt of pain, pushing herself quickly to stand up and realising that she had been pushed a few feet away from Aragorn, facing different enemies than he was. She turned around and pushed her sword into the head of a warg before jumping over the body and cutting down an Orc that flew past her on his warg.

When the Orc fell to the ground lifelessly she turned and saw another warg, raising her arm to plunge the blade into the beast but she found herself hesitating and keeping her arms in the air. It was crouched on the ground and staring at her, snarling as a warning but it did not launch itself at her like most of the others would mercilessly do. She stared into its eyes and there was one prominent emotion that she could make out: fear. It was scared. Stuck in a war that it did not want to be in, trapped in the confines of battle with no way out. Throughout all her years travelling across Middle-earth she had killed many wargs but she had never seen one that was scared and she had never met one that hesitated to kill its prey. Her eyes glanced to its beastly paw and she noticed it was matted with blood, it had been injured in the battle. Her eyes met the wargs again and she found herself unable to end its life, seeing its expression mirror her own when she had stumbled into Dale only to be attacked by Smaug, being thrust into something she had wanted no part of.

Athena wasn't able to dwell further on the matter as she felt a presence behind her, spinning around and swinging her sword to slice the head from the body of an Orc, the head falling to the ground and rolling across it with the body following suit shortly afterwards. When she turned around to rethink the decision of not killing the warg she found the space empty, no sign that the warg had been standing there in the first place.