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Jimmy finished off the last warg cleanly and, in one smooth motion, vaulted into the treetops, crouching among the branches as he looked down at the orcs searching below.
"Azog." Thorin's voice tightened. "That is impossible, He should be dead."
Below them, the orc leader rode a massive warg, one arm ending in a brutal blade fixed where his hand had once been, his nostrils flaring as he sniffed the air.
"I smell you, son of Thrór," Azog growled. "Your father burned nicely, I did that. Come out and die."
The moment Azog appeared, shock rippled through the dwarves, fear following close behind.
This made no sense.
Azog was supposed to be dead.
Thorin's greatest pride, the story sung among his people, was that he had slain Azog and avenged his father.
So how was Azog standing there now, very much alive?
"This…" whispered someone.
"Kill them." Azog barked. "They are in the trees, Leave Thorin for me, Slaughter the rest."
Wargs howled as they surged forward, leaping at the pines, jaws snapping as they tried to drag the dwarves down.
"Kill." a dwarf shouted, fear sharpening his voice.
Jimmy did not hesitate.
He dropped from the tree like a falling blade, landing hard and taking a warg's head in a single strike before it could react.
The ground-level threat shifted instantly.
All the wargs turned on him.
For a split second, Jimmy realized the twin blades were no longer ideal in this chaos, so he stowed them into the Cube, clenched his fists, and wicked knuckle blades slid out with a metallic whisper.
"Huh," Jimmy muttered. "Hope rabies is not a thing here."
Then he moved.
At full force, Jimmy became a storm, weaving between wargs and orcs alike, every leap, every turn, every strike ending a life, the rhythm of slaughter uninterrupted.
Fifteen breaths.
Within a fifty-meter radius, every warg and orc lay dead, each skull punctured cleanly, precision overwhelming brutality.
Even so, more orcs poured in, bodies pressing forward in a relentless tide, while Azog stayed well back, watching with narrowed eyes, understanding one thing very clearly.
If Jimmy reached him, there would be no fight.
So Azog changed tactics.
He sent wave after wave toward the cliff peak.
The ground shuddered.
The cliff, shaped like the head of an eagle, had become piled high with corpses, blood soaking into stone, pine trees smashed by charging wargs, all the weight bearing down on the narrow outcrop.
A crack split the rock, two fingers wide and growing.
The roots of the pines wrapped the peak like ropes, barely holding it together, but even that would not last.
The dwarves above had not noticed yet.
Azog had.
"Push them." he roared. "Up there. Collapse the cliff. Bury them."
Only then did Gandalf see it.
"Move," he shouted. "The cliff is breaking. Throw the bodies off. Reduce the weight."
The fissure widened as they worked, but the orc corpses kept coming faster than they could be dragged away.
Even Bilbo strained, hauling lighter orcs toward the edge and shoving them into the abyss.
Then it happened.
A massive white warg burst through the chaos, slamming Thorin to the ground and pinning him, its jaws snapping down again and again.
Thorin struggled, but the ambush had knocked the wind from him, his strength failing under the beast's weight.
Bilbo did not hesitate.
He charged, drove his short sword straight into the warg's eye, pushing deep until it reached the brain.
The creature howled and whipped its head, flinging Bilbo aside.
That moment was enough.
Thorin wrenched free, seized his blade, and drove it into the warg's chest, ending it.
He rose, breathing hard, then turned to Bilbo and pressed the sword back into his hands.
"Thank you, Bilbo."
"Oh," Bilbo said, shaken but steady. "No, no need to thank me."
"Move, the cliff is giving way."
Someone shouted the warning, and both Thorin and Bilbo turned toward the cracked edge. Even Jimmy, no matter how overwhelming he was, could not hold a line this long, and Azog was ruthless enough to turn corpses into weights, piling warg and orc bodies to force the cliff to collapse.
The rock trembled, fractures spreading fast, and there was no choice left, everyone jumped toward the wider section of the outcrop.
That made it worse.
Now the wargs could attack from every direction.
Jimmy fought without pause, cutting down anything that reached him, but even he was being pushed back, not by strength, but by numbers.
He killed faster than most could even follow, yet the wargs and orcs replenished even faster, every time he tried to break through and reach Azog, the orcs immediately threw themselves at the dwarves instead.
If Jimmy advanced, they charged the others without hesitation.
It trapped him.
He had a main objective: to stay with this group, to see the quest through. If they all died here before the dragon was even faced, then what did joining a dragon-slaying party even mean?
So Jimmy stayed.
Again and again, the same cycle repeated.
Azog saw it clearly.
Now it was a contest of endurance, whether Jimmy would tire first, or whether Azog's army would be ground down first.
Both were confident.
Azog glanced back at the endless ranks behind him, while Jimmy flicked his eyes toward an unopened stat panel, unspent power waiting.
Neither plan came to pass.
A piercing cry split the sky.
Wind followed, violent and sudden, blasting across the peak so hard that wargs dug their claws into stone, tearing long grooves just to keep from being blown away.
"Now! Jump!"
Gandalf shouted and the dwarves leapt without hesitation, great eagles diving in, each one catching two dwarves at a time.
"Jimmy! Now!" Gandalf called.
"All right."
Jimmy cast one last look at Azog and smiled faintly.
"Next time."
He jumped and landed on an eagle's back as massive wings beat the air, the great birds circling once before pulling away into the open sky.
Below them, Azog roared in fury.
The sound echoed off the mountains.
High above, with the danger finally falling away beneath them, Jimmy's thoughts began to wander, his hand brushing over the eagle's feathers, solid, warm, utterly unbothered by axes and arrows.
He reached into the Cube and pulled out a scroll, worn but intact, marked with unfamiliar symbols.
He turned it over, frowning.
"How does this thing even work?"
"Human." the eagle beneath him spoke calmly. "What dangerous thought is forming in that head of yours."
Jimmy froze.
"It talks."
"Gandalf," Jimmy shouted, startled. "Gandalf, the eagle is talking. Talking, This is an eagle, not a parrot."
"Young human." the eagle said with clear amusement. "We are messengers of higher powers, speech is hardly unusual. What you are holding carries the scent of ancient gods."
"This." Jimmy held up the scroll. "It is some kind of contract, supposed to bind a human and a beast together. How it actually works, I have no idea."
He hesitated, then added honestly.
"I have seen many creatures in many lands, but when I saw you, I felt it immediately. If given a choice between you and the dragon, I would choose you."
The eagle was silent for a moment.
"Flattery aside, there is danger in that object, but also opportunity. When we land, may I examine it?"
"Of course," Jimmy replied easily.
He leaned back slightly, satisfied.
After all, he had seen it clearly.
Orc axes, Flying arrows. None of it had even bent a single feather.
Stable flight, Wind resistance. Incredible speed.
If there was such a thing as a perfect mount, this was it.
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