Misty Forest – Hours After Fenna's Death
They came in numbers now.
Dozens.
Over thirty men and women, all from the Stoor village and their Wildmen allies. Some were covered in war paint. Some wore furs. Many carried bows, spears, clubs, torches, and the worst of all—dogs. Thick-shouldered, shaggy beasts with iron collars and foam on their jaws.
They came with cries of vengeance.
"He's near!"
"Find him before the sun rises!"
"He's no hobbit anymore—he's a demon!"
"Bring his head back to the fire pit!"
They built a central camp beneath a high cliff ridge, pitched torches in a wide circle, and stationed watchmen with horns. The Wolfgang moved among them, sniffing the wind, whispering to one another with blades drawn.
The orders were simple.
Track the freak. Kill the freak. Burn the freak.
Gollum watched from the trees above.
Silent. Bare. Caked in blood and mud.
His body shimmered faintly where the divine core pulsed in his chest—white veins across his ribs, gold flickering in his spine, and red pulsing down his arms.
He said nothing.
But he smiled.
And then, he vanished into the canopy.
The First to Die – The Lookout
He was young. New to the hunt. Standing on the edge of the watch perimeter with a bow trembling in his hands.
He blinked at the darkness.
Something moved in the branches above.
Then—
snap.
A vine-wrapped rock swung down, crushing his skull with a wet thump.
Before his body hit the ground, Gollum dropped silently behind him, stripped him of his bow and arrows, and melted back into the black.
The Dogs Start Dying
The first hound wandered too far from its handler.
Gollum snapped its neck with a twist and a growl, then gutted it with a broken arrowhead. He left it hanging from a tree branch, throat open, intestines trailing like ribbons.
By the time the second dog was found—skinned and arranged like an altar—panic began to spread.
Absolutely. This is where Gollum's transformation into a mythic terror, a predatory god of vengeance, reaches its psychological peak. He's no longer just killing—he's breaking their minds, turning the forest into his shrine, and their corpses into monuments of fear. Let's expand this segment with brutal clarity and horror-movie precision.
---
He Turns Their Weapons on Them
From the ridge above, a torch-bearer vanished in the blink of an eye.
One moment he was lighting the path, talking to his partner. The next, he was gone, yanked upward by a noose of braided roots.
His scream was short.
Seconds later, his body tumbled from the cliff—wrapped in nettled vines, arms dislocated, bones visibly warped beneath the skin. His torch fell beside him and sputtered out, leaving only the crack of snapping ribs as he hit the stones below.
His partner screamed.
And before he could run, a spear flew from the shadows, spinning through the air with terrifying speed and buried itself deep in his gut, punching through his spine and nailing him to a tree.
He gasped.
And in that breathless instant of agony, he saw a shadow crawl toward him—on all fours, limbs too long, eyes glowing faintly, blood caked to its face like warpaint.
Gollum.
He grinned.
And then leapt, tackling the man into the campfire behind him.
The man's shrieks filled the air as he rolled through flame, his flesh igniting, spear still sticking from his gut.
Gollum stood.
Watched him burn.
And whispered:
> "You lit the way for others. Burn it now."
---
Psychological Warfare
Hours passed.
And with every corpse they found, the hunting party unravelled.
They came across Tarn Fallowtree, one of their best trackers, stuffed headfirst into a hollow tree trunk. His legs had been broken backwards, folded at the knees, bones piercing the skin. His eyes were missing—scooped out clean—and his mouth was sewn shut with thread made from braided hair.
A note carved into the bark beside him:
"He saw nothing."
Then they found Marlo Rootscar, hanging between two black trees.
His arms were stretched wide, his ankles bound with thorned vine, his groin split open by a wooden club rammed in handle-first.
His face was frozen in a scream, lips torn, his eyes wide open and bulging.
Painted in his blood across the tree trunks behind him:
> YOU HUNTED ME
NOW I HUNT YOU
SAY MY NAME
GOLLUM
The hunters backed away in silence, their hands shaking.
The bravest among them, a Wildman named Jarn, whispered:
"Gods preserve us… he's not even a beast anymore…"
---
That night, they made no campfires.
They held their weapons with bloodless knuckles.
They argued in hushed tones. They took turns sleeping in pairs.
But in the dark, the whispers continued.
A voice… dry, breathless, slithering through the branches.
> "Gollum…"
> "Say it…"
> "Say my name…"
And then came the thump of another body hitting the dirt. Someone missing. Another set of bare feet dragging something heavy through the leaves.
They didn't know when it would strike.
Only that it would.
---
Ambush at the Firepit
The firepit blazed in the center of the makeshift camp, throwing shadows against the trees. Twenty hunters stood close, shoulders brushing, breath clouding in the cool mountain air. Their faces were pale with tension, clothes torn and stained from hours of chasing a ghost.
One of them whispered, "We wait it out. In the light. He can't take us all together."
Another added, "The smoke will keep him away. Like it does to wolves."
They circled up. Bows pointed outward. Knives drawn.
What they didn't see—what they couldn't see—was that Gollum had spent the last hour crawling through the canopy above them, hauling stones the size of barrels and stacking them onto a lattice of dead logs and braced branches.
They thought they were safe.
Until—
CRACK.
One branch snapped.
Another split.
And with a final push of his inhuman arms, Gollum loosed half a ton of stone, logs, and bone-wrought debris directly onto the firepit.
It came down like the fist of a god.
BOOM.
The camp exploded in chaos.
Flames burst sideways. Sparks filled the air. A wall of stone crashed through tents, crushing four hunters outright, their bodies snapping like wet branches. A log pinned a screaming woman beneath it, her spine crushed, legs twitching.
Smoke rose. Blinding. Choking. Thick.
They couldn't see.
And through the smoke—
he came.
---
The Final Hunt
They ran.
What remained of the once proud warband—barely a dozen now, bleeding, deafened, disoriented—staggered into the woods, leaving the fire behind.
They thought they had escaped the trap.
They were wrong.
---
Kill One
A man turned to check behind him.
Gollum was already there.
He punched the man so hard in the chest his sternum caved in, ribs snapping inward like dry twigs. The man gasped, coughed blood, and collapsed like a sack of grain.
Gollum kept moving. No sound. No pause.
---
Kill Two
Two women ran together, holding torches.
A vine whipped across their ankles. One tripped and fell.
Gollum landed beside her, picked her up by the throat with one hand and smashed her head into the other woman's face, cracking both skulls.
They slumped together in the dirt, twitching.
---
Kill Three
A man with a warhorn screamed into the trees: "HELP! GODS, HELP US!"
Gollum picked up a discarded hatchet and hurled it across twenty feet of brush.
It spun, end over end, before burying itself between the man's shoulder blades.
He gurgled. Stumbled. Fell.
---
Kill Four – The Message
A woman limped through the river shallows.
She heard a whisper.
> "Say my name…"
Then something wrapped around her ankle—a vine, looped into a noose. She was dragged backward into the water, screaming, legs kicking.
When they found her body hours later, it had been tied upright between two trees, her guts hanging from her chest like streamers, her mouth filled with river pebbles.
Across her chest, carved deep:
> YOU CHASED A SHADOW
NOW YOU DIE IN DARKNESS
---
The Final Four
They huddled at the base of a cliff, shaking, four survivors too broken to speak.
One tried to pray.
One tried to reload his bow, hands shaking so hard the arrows slipped.
One just cried.
And the last… just waited.
Then a rock fell.
Then a second.
They looked up.
And Gollum dropped from above like a meteor, knees landing with a crunch on one man's shoulders, driving him into the ground so hard his legs snapped like matchsticks.
The others screamed.
Gollum rolled forward, grabbed the crying man by the face, and slammed him backward against the cliff wall, caving in the back of his skull.
He grabbed the archer last.
Tore the bow from his hands.
And strangled him with the string.
---
Dawn
The forest was still.
A gentle wind moved the branches. Birds did not sing.
No one stood.
Every body had been twisted, hung, splayed, or impaled in ways designed to terrify.
Some were hoisted upside down, their faces carved into mock smiles.
Others were nailed to trees with their own weapons.
A few were posed around the firepit, made to look like they were still sitting, heads bowed—until you saw the hollow eye sockets.
And at the center—
On a rock soaked in blood—
Gollum crouched.
His muscles twitched, still tensed.
Steam curled from his skin in the cold air.
The core in his chest pulsed slowly, contentedly:
White: healing the minor cuts and bruises he barely noticed
Gold: keeping his spine solid, bones uncracked
Red: faint but present—satisfied
He was unharmed.
Unshaken.
He looked at the bodies.
Then up at the trees.
Then, he laughed.
Softly at first.
Then louder.
And louder.
Until it echoed through the forest like a storm.
> "They came for Gollum…"
> "They found him."
---
Moments After the Massacre
---
The forest was silent.
The bodies still hung in the trees. Blood soaked into moss and root. The birds had stopped singing, and the wind blew low and slow, like it mourned what it had seen.
Gollum stood alone in the clearing, steam rising off his blood-slick skin. His heart beat slow and deep. The light in his chest—white, gold, red—pulsed gently, no longer in fury but in rhythm, like a drum guiding him forward.
There was no one left to kill.
No one left to chase him.
No one left to call him freak.
And now… there was nowhere left to go.
He looked up. Beyond the trees, in the far distance, the mountains loomed like titans—jagged and grey, their peaks lost in cloud. The Misty Mountains. Cold. Old. Waiting.
And somewhere in those mountains…
Moria.
---
He remembered.
Years ago, while still Smeagol, before the stares grew sharp and the whispers cruel, there was a night when a Wildman war-leader visited the Stoor village for trade. He brought hides, furs, and stories. After the meat was shared and the pipeweed passed around, the warriors began to speak of old things. Of things buried under stone.
One tale had burned itself into Smeagol's memory like a brand.
> "There was once a kingdom of stone under the mountain," the Wildman had said, voice low and eyes glassy. "They say it glittered like starlight, filled with halls so high you'd think the sky was underground. Dwarves ruled it—proud, gold-hungry, unkillable."
> "But pride is meat for shadows."
> "They dug too deep. Broke too far. And woke something that wasn't meant to be touched. A creature of fire and darkness. They say it hunted them. Not like a beast—but like a god. It killed them one by one in their halls. Didn't roar. Didn't charge. Just waited. And watched. And burned."
> "Now no dwarf goes there. No man dares the black gate. Not even the Elves. They say if you step too loud near Moria, you'll hear breathing from the stone. Waiting."
> "The fire sleeps. But it dreams of blood."
---
Gollum had listened in awe back then, his big blue eyes wide. Back then he thought it was just a story.
Now?
Now he hoped it wasn't.
Because he was done running.
He had become a monster in the woods.
He wanted to see what lived beneath the mountain.
If the world above hated him, then let the world below test him.
---
Gollum looked down at his hands—scarred, thickened, glowing faintly with light-veins that spidered across his arms and into his chest.
He took one last look behind him. The corpses. The firepit. The forest that had called him freak.
> "Goodbye, Smeagol…"
And then, barefoot and bare-chested, he began to walk.
---
The Path of Durin
The old trail was half-vanished, swallowed by time and trees. But it was there, if you knew how to see.
A line of forgotten stones. A river path. A curve in the land that Durin the Deathless once walked with hammer in hand, back when the world was young.
Gollum walked that path now.
His breath fogged in the rising cold.
His toes bled from frostbitten stone.
But he did not stop.
The mountain grew closer.
The wind howled.
And far above him, in the deepest reaches of the Misty Mountains, an old breath stirred…
…as if something was beginning to wake.
---
The Trees Above the Trail to Moria – Just After the Massacre
---
Tauriel crouched among the high branches, heart pounding beneath her breastplate, lips parted in silence. Her breath came shallow and fast. She hadn't meant to follow the trail this far, but the smell of blood had drawn her in like smoke from a funeral pyre.
And now she watched him.
The creature. The man. The beast.
Gollum.
He walked below her, bare-chested, caked in the blood of those he had killed, muscles shifting like ropes under his skin, glistening in the mist.
He made no sound except for the slow, rhythmic beat of his breath. His spine arched like that of a stalking panther. His body moved with a brutal, animal grace—not trained, not Elven—but something deeper. Primal. Unbound.
Tauriel gripped the tree tighter, as if it were the only thing anchoring her to reality.
She had seen the aftermath.
She had seen what he did to them.
The Stoor Hobbits, her people's friends. Hung from trees. Split open. Skulls shattered. Limbs rearranged. The wildmen with spears buried in their guts. Carved messages. Blood painted like ritual.
At first, she'd thought to stop him. To help the village. To act.
But then she saw him.
Saw how he moved, how he fought, how he did not tire. How he killed with purpose, but not mindlessness.
And she saw… something else.
---
Not a Hobbit. Not a Beast. Something Else.
He wasn't like any creature she had ever seen.
His face had traces of hobbit-kind—but only just. His features were sharper. His ears longer. His skin rougher. His muscles impossibly developed for one of his size. His voice, when he spoke to the corpses, had been not mad—but intimate. Whispering to the dead like they were old lovers.
He wasn't a man.
He wasn't a beast.
He was something new.
Something undeniable.
And Tauriel… couldn't look away.
---
Desire Born of Emptiness
A strange, shameful heat rose in her belly. A pulse, low and steady, deep in her core.
She pressed her thighs together instinctively, face flushed with confusion and something else. Something she hadn't felt in centuries—not since the night she tried to lure Legolas into that river.
She remembered it now. The soft dress. The fake tears. The hope that he would lean down, that his lips would touch hers—that a kiss might be enough to start what she didn't fully understand.
A child.
A home.
A place of belonging.
But Legolas hadn't kissed her.
He had called her a bitch.
He had slapped her and told his father.
He had sent her to exile.
> They all laughed at me.
They all said I didn't know what I wanted.
But I do. I've always known. I want a child. I want a family.
And I want a man strong enough to never let me be alone again.
She stared at Gollum's back as he moved silently through the mist.
She imagined his hands gripping her hips.
His voice, low and hoarse, whispering her name in the dark.
The way his muscles would feel pressing into her thighs.
> If I kissed him… would it work this time?
Would I finally feel it? Would my womb quiet down?
Would I finally be a mother?
---
The Fear and the Flame
But she was afraid.
He had crushed men's skulls with his bare feet.
He had split open bodies with improvised weapons.
He had torn into throats with his teeth.
> He could kill me. Easily. Without trying.
But that only made the feeling stronger. That only made it more real.
She wanted to be claimed. Not courted. Not serenaded.
Claimed.
> If I could make him mine… if I could make this beast my beast…
I would never fear anything again.
And our children…
They would be strong. Stronger than any elf. Any man. Any king.
---
Gollum paused on the trail below.
He sniffed the air.
Tauriel's breath caught.
He was sensing her.
His body turned slightly, muscles flexing, head cocking to the side.
Her legs trembled.
Her throat dried.
And deep within her womb, the ache became a burning throb that could no longer be denied.
---
She would follow him.
Not today. Not yet. Not until she was ready.
But soon.
She would find a way to approach him.
To kneel before him.
To ask—not with words, but with breath and body—
> "Please… make me yours."
---