Predator or Prey | The Hobbit

NINE

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Predator or Prey

CHAPTER NINE.

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The wargs continued to use more of their strength and weight as they jumped at the trees, beginning to start to knocking them over and pulling the trees out by their roots.

Selene noticed the that tree Bilbo, Fíli and Kíli were on, it fell over to the one where Bofur and Dwalin stood. The trees went down like dominoes, eventually all the dwarves and Bilbo joined her and Gandalf on the last standing tree. She heard the two pale orcs laugh evilly, as the Company clung onto the branches for their lives.

"Selene, hand me that!" Gandalf motioned at the round pine cone at her shoulder. She grabbed it and passed it to the wizard, who used his staff to ignite it.

And with a shout, Gandalf threw the burning pine cone down where the wargs were. The creatures flinched back, disliking it. They barked violently as Gandalf burned more and dropped them down to the dwarves.

The burning pine cones were thrown from each direction, forcing the wargs back from the tree. When the wargs retreated behind Azog and Nhel, the dwarves cheered gleefully. That was until the tree pulled back, ending their moment.

Everyone on the tree hung dangerously high, their hearts beating rapidly. The fall was really far down.

Ori screamed when he lost his grip on the branch, but quickly grabbed onto Dori's ankles for dear life. The tree fell back even lower, the root of the tree was being pulled out from the dirt one at a time.

"Mister Gandalf!" Dori cried for the wizard. He too was losing his grip. Dori screamed, not able to hold onto the branch much longer. Gandalf threw his staff down to let Dori grab onto, but it wasn't going to last very long.

Selene's gold eyes blinked from Nhel to Dori and Ori. Did she want to kill Nhel or save the poor dwarves hanging onto Gandalf's staff? Her debate to herself ended when she noticed Thorin's small figure striding to Azog.

"What is he doing?" She rushed out as Thorin charged at Azog.

The Company watched him fall to the ground, after the warg's paw smack his forehead. He slowly held himself up on one knee, just when Azog came back and swung his mace at Thorin's face, knocking him back to the ground full of bark and twigs.

"No!" The dwarves wailed, gaping at their King who was now being bitten down on, in the white warg's mouth. "Thorin!"

The King brought his sword and slashed it onto the warg's snout, the warg throwing him off and onto another flat rock that was close to the edge of the cliff they were all on.

Azog spoke to an additional orc, where it got off it's warg and advanced to Thorin's damaged body. It held it's knife down against Thorin's throat, raising his knife above his head and brought it back down - only to be tackled down by Bilbo. The hobbit drove his sword into the orc's abdomen, before crawling on top of it and stabbing the orc a few more times.

Bilbo ran to Thorin's body and stood in front of him, waving his sword as warning to the orcs who snarled at them. She felt the tree stumble when the all of the dwarves - except Dori and Ori - ran off, toward the orcs with their weapons raised to help Bilbo protect their King.

Selene glanced at Dori who was just about to lose his grip from Gandalf's staff. Without a word, she removed her head chain and wrapped it around her wrist, then jumped out into the empty space next to her and changed her skin.