The cavern of the Healer’s appears in sight, the woman narrowing her golden eyes to spy more figures than just her two from the gateway entering into its stone passages; she had slipped back to allow the others to lead ahead towards safety, trusting her own honed skills and nimble reactions to carry her behind them and to defend their hinds from any stray beasts that broke away from the pack.

The fear, thick and permeating, clings to the soft flesh of her nostrils and draws her heart into a frantic race, plunging to the sound of the hooves that roar in a giant swell of noise behind her. A deer darts away from the group and in front of her, instantaneously drawing her haunches tight and her bodice forward in a lunge, golden horn angling as she dives through the air and driving hard into the upper shoulder of the beast. It falls, its death call sounding with the din of its brethren who flee, the battle snort of the woman as she seamlessly lifts her crown from the body as it falls and skirts it’s kicking legs with her own golden pillars, a gleaming ribbon of crimson spraying the air as she continues her mad dash forward.

Locks of her dark tail are snagged against the antlers of the creature, but she ignores the tug of the strands as they relinquish their holds; more pressing are the needs of safety. A straggler, young and inexperienced, dallies in her path, and with a commanding shout she tugs them into line alongside her, a smart smack with her blood stained horn sending the youngling sprinting ahead of her with the others.

In what feels like eons, she reaches the stone of the cavern, taking in the visage of those who have come to the shelter and pivoting with frenzy tightened sinew to look out on the mayhem that sweeps her blessed valley. She counts many in the shelter of this cave, and can spy others in the smaller ones along the way, but what she does not see is her Haruspex or the black one she so despises but has been commanded to rule alongside.

The madman is likely safe, tucked away in the holy cavern itself or in his own dark cave of death, and as she prances out of the awning of their own shelter and peers out into the chaos that sweeps the land, she does spy a dark shape that just might be the Reaper, sending animals to their deaths and herding the rest back into the tangled horde of bodies. It is satisfying enough for her to remain here, to defend those within the cavern behind her…

But even as she thinks it, it seems the tail of the riot arrives, the last few stragglers spewing blood tinged foam from cracked and weary lips, their limbs bloodied and useless, some mauled to the point of nonexistence as they crawled in an attempt to get away.

Its horrifying, forces her stomach to clench unnaturally as she looks upon the gore laced display, the grasses mauled into mud as they blended with the life fluid and snow beneath the weight of so many bodies. It stinks, it stinks like decay and panic, and for a moment she sees bright whiteness in the fringes of her vision, she feels her heart nearly burst inside of her in primitive response to the aura that permeates her home.

Kill the weak, she manages finally, a command less harsh than her others, spoken as if by a woman who rubs her fingers into her temples and curls into a ball within herself had she hands to do so, a rare action of mercy given by the golden woman as she forces the impending horror back within herself (for she knows this is not the end – it is only a beginning). Turning back around to face the cavern, her whole ear turned to listen to the straggling animals that drag themselves with bleating sounds of pain and horror behind her, she picks out the stranger and the Golden Spy from among the rest and makes her way towards them.

Thranduil, she calls as she’s within earshot, over the sound of hooves moving to do her bidding and the murmur of astounded and horrified voices, you and the new guy with me. She realizes that she’s covered in sweat, that the sheathes of her platinum armor are slick against the sheer fabrics that hold them together, that it is chilly in the patches where the cloth presses against her flesh and the wind touches them.

And she had just bathed this morning. A disgusted sigh escapes her as she glances back out into the land, up the mountainside that the animals had spilled over, surely most of them to their deaths.

Dead things don’t move themselves.