The Great Hall of Erebor—vast and solemn, a cathedral hewn from the mountain itself—shuddered beneath a sound that was half roar, half earthquake. Smaug's scream tore through stone and marrow alike, as a dozen Drakescourge Grenades detonated across his lower chest and belly. The concussive force rippled inward, shattering the air and hurling the dragon's colossal form sideways into one of the massive, angular pillars that soared to support the ceiling. Ancient stone cracked with a groan like thunder.
Smaug's wings lashed the air, his tail writhed and shattered masonry, his roar rising like a tempest. Fury burned in his molten gaze as he turned toward Thorin Oakenshield, fire building in his chest to incinerate the heir of Durin once and for all.
But he froze in surprise.
From behind pillars stepped a dozen dwarves, each braced with strange green-enameled tubes hoisted over their shoulders. Smaug's nostrils flared. For an instant he wondered how so many had escaped his notice earlier when he had scented every corner of this hall. But then he narrowed his blazing eyes. It mattered little. What mattered was destruction—burning these pests from his halls, erasing their insolent schemes in dragonfire.
Already his belly glowed a deep, molten orange as fire gathered in his chest.
The dwarves, however, did not scatter in terror. Their strategy had been decided long before this confrontation. With no time to reload in battle against a dragon, they had divided into two coordinated squads. Team One—Thorin, Dwalin, Fili, Kili, Oin, Gloin, and Dori—would strike to cause maximum harm. Team Two—Balin, Bifur, Bofur, Bombur, Nori, and Ori—would work to disrupt the dragon's assaults and protect their kin.
Each dwarf carried a four-barreled Arcane Missile Launcher, its tubes bristling with a strange mix of Runes and steel. Within each lay four deadly surprises: Frostbite, Thunderlance, Dragonpiercer, and AethericImplosion missiles.
Bilbo Baggins, too slight to carry such a weapon and still flee when needed, had been armed differently. Ben had pressed into his hands a pouch of Drakescourge Grenades, a brace of Sonic Resonance Bombs, and a stoppered vial of Wiggenweldpotion to revive any fallen companion. The hobbit clutched them now, heart pounding, trying not to imagine what it meant to face the dragon of legend.
Now Thorin, sheathing his sword, lifted the launcher Dwalin had just handed him. He braced his shoulder, breath steadying as Smaug's chest heaved with fire.
"Launch!" Thorin growled.
Seven launchers spat thunder. Runes flared as missiles locked onto their massive quarry, streaking through the smoky air toward Smaug.
Smaug blinked in astonishment as streaks of light and smoke arced toward him—strange arrows, blunt but swift. Too swift. Before he could react, they struck.
The first salvo bit deep. Frostbite missiles detonated, washing his foreleg in clouds of liquid nitrogen. Blue-white frost leapt across crimson scales, encasing them in brittle ice. Smaug snarled, his talons scraping against the stone as sudden cold gnawed into his flesh.
Then the Thunderlance missiles struck. The white warheads cracked open, crystal capacitors discharging spears of lightning that leapt across his chest and wings. Smaug convulsed as nerves sizzled and muscles seized. Crackling arcs snapped across his form, chaining him to agony.
Next came the Dragonpiercer missiles. Their warheads split midair, driving enchanted tungsten carbide drills into his chest and wing root. With vicious persistence, they burrowed past scales into living flesh. Alchemic charges erupted within, tearing scale from sinew. A howl thundered from Smaug's throat, wings jerking wildly, smoke rising from shattered plates.
Last, the Aetheric Implosion missiles descended—tiny suns burning blue-violet. But Smaug had learned. He twisted, wings snapping open, tail lashing, dodging the worst of their approach. Yet even his speed could not deny them fully. Two spheres struck. For a heartbeat they hung, spinning with impossible density, before collapsing inward.
The implosions were silent, dreadful. Flesh, stone, and scale crumpled inward as if reality itself bent beneath invisible fists, then burst outward in shockwaves that warped the very air. The dwarves staggered, bones rattled, ears ringing—but Smaug bore the torment entire. His body reeled, wings flailing, tail smashing pillars to rubble. The mountain groaned, old stones weeping dust.
The company, braced and grim, allowed themselves fleeting smiles. Their weapons had bloodied the monster.
"ENOUGH!" roared Smaug, fury made voice. His chest swelled; molten light surged from belly to throat. With a savage heave, he unleashed it.
A firestorm poured from his jaws, a living tide of flame that swept the hall from end to end. Ice melted from his body in an instant, vanishing in sheets of steam.
"SHIELDS!" Thorin bellowed.
The Shield of Thráin slammed into place before him, runes burning bright. Around him, dwarves lifted their left arms, and the etched runes upon their vambraces flared. Shimmering barriers unfurled, translucent walls of arcane energy. The dragonfire struck them full-on. The air shuddered. The barriers rippled like water beneath a storm—but they held.
At the same moment, Gandalf and Saruman raised their staffs, Ben his wand. Three wills intertwined, shaping flame with ancient command. The torrent of flame was seized, bent, channeled sideways into stone vents long sealed. Fire vanished into the mountain's throat, roaring upward into forgotten shafts.
Heat lingered, suffocating, oppressive. Stone glowed faintly. Breath seared lungs. Yet the dwarves stood, singed but unbroken.
Smaug's eyes narrowed in disbelief. His flames—his crowning dominion—had failed. The pests yet lived. Not scorched, not writhing in agony, but alive, armed, and waiting.
What he did not know was that Ben had seen to this, giving each a draught of Fire Protection Potion. For half an hour, dragonfire itself could not harm them. The dragon's greatest weapon had been blunted.
Smaug coiled again, fire rising in his chest—but Team Two was quicker. From his flank, Bofur emerged, launcher braced. A Frostbite missile shrieked through the air, locked to its target. Smaug tried to evade, but the missile pursued, striking his chest. Mist erupted, biting through molten scales. Fire in his belly faltered, choking into smoke. He roared in frustration, steam and flame clashing upon his body.
Dwalin and Fili seized the moment. Thunderlance and Dragonpiercer missiles screamed forth. Smaug tried to dodge the piercing drill, tried to swat the lightning away with his wing—but the effort was futile.
The Dragonpiercer tore into his ribs, exploding deep inside. His scream cracked stone. His wing, half a beat too slow, caught the Thunderlance's fury. Lightning raked across wing and chest, his vast body spasming.
And then Ori, small but steady, stepped from shadow. Patient until now, he leveled his launcher, his eye hard with resolve.
The red-tipped Aetheric Implosion missile streaked forth. Smaug saw it—remembered the agony of collapsing space—and terror touched him. He tried to move. But his body was locked by lightning. Muscles betrayed him.
The missile struck his right shoulder. For a heartbeat, time itself bent. Scales, flesh, and bone folded inward, crushed as though the mountain itself had clenched its fist. Then it burst outward in a spray of ruin.
Smaug's roar shook Erebor to its bones. His right shoulder hung mangled, shattered beyond healing. The dragon staggered, blood streaming from rents in his gleaming hide, his immense body convulsing as he crashed sideways into a row of pillars. Ancient stone groaned and splintered under the impact. Smaug had had enough.
With a sound like a furnace tearing itself apart, he reared back, chest glowing white-hot. Then he exhaled—not a focused blast this time, but a tidal wave of flame, poured out with one intent: to drown the entire hall in fire and incinerate everything that dared resist him.
The inferno surged forward.
But the dwarves stood fast. Their arcane shields flared to life, shimmering domes of magic warding off the dragonfire. The Fire Protection Potions coursing through their blood lent them strength, keeping skin from blistering even as flames licked close. Gandalf and Saruman drove their staffs into the stone floor, ancient words on their lips as they bent Smaug's firestorm away, splitting its fury against the ceiling. Ben raised his wand, his barrier shimmering like glass under the hammer of the flames, shielding himself and Bilbo from the unbearable heat.
Smaug drew back, enraged to see his might blunted yet again. His eyes narrowed with murderous hatred. Fire had failed—so he would break them by force.
His tail lashed out like a scythe, cutting through a line of pillars as though they were reeds. Stone shattered and rained down, forcing Dwalin and Kíli to dive aside as a column collapsed where they had stood moments before. Then the dragon's colossal wings beat once, unleashing a hurricane gale that turned rubble into a storm of stone shrapnel. The dwarves scrambled for cover, hurling themselves behind shattered columns and fallen stone.
Ben did not stay idle. His eyes locked on the dragon's glowing gaze. Raising his wand, he cried out an incantation.
A surge of lightning burst forth, splitting mid-air into twin tendrils of crackling white fire. They struck Smaug full in the eyes.
The dragon shrieked in agony. His terrible gaze went dark, sockets pouring blood in rivulets down his scarred muzzle. Blinded, Smaug thrashed wildly, his fury made more destructive by desperation. His massive bulk tore at the very bones of Erebor, each convulsion bringing down stone and marble.
The dwarves seized their chance. Switching their launchers to SALVO mode, they unleashed their arsenal in a thunderous wave.
One by one, launchers roared. Missiles screamed across the hall in a synchronized storm. Frostbite warheads detonated, coating Smaug's scales in jagged ice. Thunderlance missiles struck with lightning's fury, making the beast convulse as arcs of energy tore through him. Dragonpiercers punched deep, carving bloody holes in his armored hide. Then came the dreadful Aetheric Implosions, ripping away whole pieces of him—an entire foreleg vanished in a burst of unnatural collapse, part of a wing torn into nothingness.
Wounded. Blinded. Bleeding.
Smaug stumbled, his body a ruin of flesh and fury. But even beaten, he was not broken. Sniffing the currents of air, he found the open way—the path that led back toward the front gates and the open sky.
It sickened him to flee. To retreat before dwarves of all creatures. Yet his mind, sharp as ever even in pain, raced with questions. Where had they found such weapons? Such shields? Such sorcery to thwart his fire? He needed time, needed answers. And when he returned, with fury stoked and knowledge gained, Erebor would be his again. And these vermin—these gnats with their tricks—would pay.
He spread his wings, the left torn and mangled, and with a mighty effort lurched into the air. His vast body shook, blood trailing like banners, as he clawed his way toward the gates. The dwarves stared upward as he fought towards the open way, a wounded titan still too dangerous to be left alive.
But the Company was not finished.
From the shadow of a pillar, a lone figure stepped forward. Bard the Bowman. He had waited, patient as a hunter, watching, measuring. Now, as the beast turned to flee, he raised the long, rune-etched launcher to his shoulder. Its enchanted scope glowed, piercing flesh to reveal the beating furnace of Smaug's heart.
"This is for Dale," he whispered.
His finger squeezed the trigger.
The Heartseeker missile streaked forth, wrapped in glyph-light. A Gravity-Inversion field bent its path; a Magical Acceleration rune drove it to supersonic speed.
Blind though he was, Smaug felt it. A killing star racing for him. He twisted, wings clawing at the air, but he was too slow.
"No…!" His roar shook the massive cavern.
The Heartseeker struck true.
Runes of Intangibility flared, and the warhead slipped through scales as though they were mist. The diamond-drill tip spun, burrowing deep into the dragon's chest. Smaug shrieked, beating himself towards the mountain's roof in desperation, claws raking at his own breast. And then the missile's heart ignited.
The crystal capacitors discharged. Lightning flared into the Argon-filled core of the missile, birthing a mini sun within his body. Plasma fire burned at more than 10000 °C, boiling flesh, charring bone, devouring his mighty heart.
Smaug's death cry was the roar of a mountain breaking. The hall shook with it, stones raining from the ceiling. His wings faltered, his body slackened. The light guttered from the holes that had once been eyes.
And then he fell.
The company cried out—Smaug's corpse was plummeting straight toward Bard.
The bowman stood frozen, knowing there was no time to escape.
But in that instant, Ben was there. He apparated with a crack, seized Bard, and disapparated again in the blink of an eye. The dragon's corpse slammed down like a mountain, shaking the hall, dust blasting out in a choking cloud.
A heartbeat later, Ben and Bard rolled across the flagstones before the company.
Bilbo scrambled to his feet, pale. "What—what was that?"
Ben stood, brushing dust from his coat. "Apparition."
Bard staggered upright, still reeling. "It felt like—"
"Being squeezed through a straw?" Ben finished with a wry grin.
Bard nodded breathlessly. Ben chuckled. "That's why I don't use it often."
But no one was listening.
All eyes were on the fallen giant.
Smaug the Terrible lay still, his body sprawled across the shattered floor of the Great Hall. His wings were broken, his chest caved, blood pouring in rivers over the stone.
Saruman's voice broke the silence, soft and disbelieving. "You… actually managed to do it."
He looked at them all, his expression unreadable. "You killed Smaug."
The spell shattered.
A shout rose among the dwarves—triumphant, incredulous. "He is dead! Smaug is dead!"
They rushed one another, laughing, shouting, embracing, tears streaking their soot-stained faces. One by one they seized Ben, crushing him in bear hugs, clapping his shoulders, roaring their thanks.
Ben laughed with them, joy bursting from his chest. For a heartbeat he allowed himself to revel in it—victory, the impossible made real.
Then his smile faded.
He looked around, searching through the smoke and rubble. "Where's Thorin?"