Moon

Chapter 16: The Last Stand

Moon breathed ice, hitting Smaug in the back of the head. He hissed in anger and turned around. His blazing red ones met her blue ones.

Smaug smirked at her and her eyes began to turn red. A blank look started to etch itself onto her face.

"Go back to Erebor. Kill Oakenshield and the others," he hissed at her.

"YOU WILL NOT CONTROL ME!" she burst out, flying forwards and latching onto his neck.

He roared and smacked her away with his claws, sending her tumbling through the air. Smaug turned towards Laketown.

"I AM FIRE. I AM DEATH."

She launched after him, meeting him in the air over Laketown.

"I AM ICE. I AM LIFE."

Fire and ice crackled at one another in the air, battling to try and reach the opposing dragon.

Smaug won, once again, and Moon howled in pain as her scales burned and crumbled, leaving bare spots and exposing her glittering blue skin.

He batted her out of the air, sending her hurtling down into Laketown, dazed. She slid through the town,

Before she could even process what had happened, Smaug was over her. He put a leg on her chest, claws digging in to her exposed skin. Moon whimpered and struggled to get out from under him.

"It looks like this is your last stand. What a pathetic one at that," he laughed.

Her eyes locked with Bard's and she wheezed a laugh. "It looks as if it is both of ours," she said.

The black arrow whizzed through air, stabbing Smaug through the chest in one of the places his scales had been frozen away.

Moon's head snaked up, to look at him trying I fly in the air. The light went from his eyes, and he fell through the sky, crashing into the lake.

Moon drew a shuddering breath, before her eyes rolled back and her head crashed onto the ground. Dark red blood trickled down her neck, some of her scales still sizzling.

Legolas leapt to her head. Small, uneven puffs of cold air were coming out of her nose, but it wasn't at all comforting. The armor she had been wearing had collapsed on her side, digging it into her skin and making it even more difficult to breath.

She ground back into a girl again, and the wounds looked ten times worse.

"What do you need?" asked Tauriel from his side.

"Clothes. A blanket, anything. We need to get this armor off of her and the blood stopped," he said shakily. She had been his bet friend for years, something else at one point and he wasn't ready to have her death on his hands.

Her injuries looked much worse when she was a girl. Second and third degree burns covered almost every inch of her body, her neck was bleeding extensively, and she was sweating.

He cradled her in his arms and he took her to where the rapids ran clean. Tauriel soon returned.

"Do you mind changing her. I don't think she would appreciate me doing that."

Tauriel laughed tensely and slipped off her armor. She put various herbs and plants on Moon's burns before wrapping them. The only part of her body that wasn't burned were the palms of her hands and the bottom of her feet. She slipped Moon into a loose cream colored silk dress that went down to about the middle of her thighs.

"You can come back now. I have treated all her burns, but her neck," she whispered, taking her hand away from Moon's neck, which she had been holding the whole time. She rinsed her bloody hands in the river.