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A red glow lights the cavern, the temperature rising still, and the orcs flee in fear.
Legolas knows it, the shape of this new terror, instantly. Knows its name from stories of old, of evil and of heroes. In truth, they had been elfling tales. He did not think any still roamed Middle-earth.
“A Balrog has come! We cannot fight this. Run!”
They fly as fast as a company like them can, but there is little hope. The Balrog is on them quickly, and every gain of theirs seems to be followed by an equal loss.
From the rear of their guard he eyes his companions — a Dúnadan, four hobbits, a man, and a dwarf — and realises he is their only chance. They will not make it otherwise.
I can’t do this, he thinks, uselessly.
When they come upon the bridge he knows he will have to defend them here.
“Go!” he urges his companions. The Balrog is too fast for them to flee from it all the way through Moria — it will have to be stopped. It will have to be slain. At the beginning of this quest, back in Imladris, Legolas had sworn his life in defense of Frodo and his journey. It was not an oath he had made lightly.
“Go onwards, do not stay!” he urges again, and turns, and does not wait to see if they listen. He can have no distraction now. At his side he has naught but his bow and his hunting knife. They will have to be enough. He will have to be enough.
That towering silhouette of darkness rears up, deeper than all shadow. It is worse than in all his basest nightmares. Flames leap along its great brow and down its back. It regards him little, and moves onto the bridge.
“Begone,” he says to it, and his voice fails, fear strangling it from his throat. A candle flickering in a gale. But he cannot fail now. He cannot let the Fellowship fall.
Heroes had done this, once.
Legolas will do this now, though he is no hero.
He imagines the Valar are with him. Ivon, who had long been the most beloved in Greenwood; he thinks of the beauty in all her make. And Tauron, the Huntsman, ever a guide to the Eldar. He calls on the Great Rider to aid him now; to lend him his strength.
Inside of his heart, his fëa goes from a guttering flash to a roaring inferno.
“Begone!” he calls, voice greater than he’s ever heard it. Like the Warrior-Kings of old, who tore battlefields asunder with their war cries.
The Balrog takes notice of him now and bellows at him, a sound born from the heat of a dark flame, but Legolas is not moved. It’s whip circles above, spitting.
His first arrows are loosed before it can move toward him, and land in one of its beady eyes — his next two, in the other.
Legolas aims his bow upwards but for a moment. The cavern is wreathed in darkness, not lit by the Balrog’s own flames, and so he does not see if his arrow strikes true. Already he aims another into the Balrog’s open mouth as he leaps above a strike from its terrible red sword.
An almighty crack echoes through the cavern as a great, sharpened section of the ceiling comes loose, careening down towards them. He leaps from its path just in time and it lands true on the Balrog. The bridge, at the point just before Legolas’ feet, collapses under the blow and takes the beast with it into the abyss.
Legolas is victorious. He turns, then, to catch up with his company. Aragorn and Faramir stand at the edge of the bridge; the rest of the Fellowship hide further back, in the shadow of a great arch. They stayed for him.
But from the void he hears it, the swish of a whip coming up behind him. He leaps, but its reach is too great. For all his speed, at the moment it matters most, he is not fast enough.
The thongs of the whip curl around his ankles and pull him after its master.