While Bamsı launched a relentless assault against the two Witch Elves before him, Elrohir shook off the dizziness clouding his mind and finally began to grasp the situation. Wasting no time, the Elf prince called out to warn the hulking warrior who had come to their rescue:
"Warrior! There is poison on their weapons, be careful."
Hearing this warning, Bamsı decided to reign in his movements, adopting a slightly more controlled and cautious stance. He swung one of his swords fiercely from high to low; one of the Witch Elves nimbly leapt to the right, the other to the left, narrowly escaping the crushing blow. However, right in the middle of his lunge, Bamsı twisted his wrist with incredible flexibility, redirecting his vertical strike into a sweeping horizontal arc aimed at the Elf on his right. The Witch Elf reflexively crossed her two short swords in front of her, barely managing to block the heavy impact.
Seizing this momentary opening, the other Elf on the left darted in to attack Bamsı's exposed flank. But Bamsı, having been trained in the art of dual-wielding since his earliest childhood, retaliated with blinding speed and parried the assault. As steel scraped against steel, sending a shower of sparks into the air, Bamsı delivered a brutal kick with all his might straight into the stomach of the Elf on his right. The Witch Elf took the blow hard, stumbling backward and shuddering violently as if she were about to empty her stomach.
Using the momentum of his kick to his advantage, Bamsı pivoted swiftly on his heel and unleashed a simultaneous horizontal strike with both of his blades at once. Meeting this double blow—amplified by the sheer speed of his spin—the Dark Elf lost her footing and staggered backward uncontrollably. The moment Bamsı saw his enemy leave a glaring opening, he lunged forward and slammed her to the ground with a vicious shoulder barge. Without a moment's pause, he spun around, locked the incoming strike of the other Witch Elf with his crossed blades, and delivered a devastating headbutt squarely to the woman's face.
Staggering back from this unexpectedly crude and jarring blow, the woman suddenly felt a sharp, agonizing pain in her throat. The immediate rush of warmth and a terrifying suffocating sensation engulfed her entire body. She instinctively reached for her neck to comprehend what had just happened, but it was in vain; she dropped to her knees, her eyes wide with unadulterated shock. Within seconds, she completely lost her balance, collapsing face-first onto the rocky earth, perishing right then and there.
After shooting a brief, dismissive glance at the fallen woman, Bamsı immediately turned his attention to the other—the Witch Elf he had just tackled to the ground a moment prior. Seeing her sister's lifeless body and the fatal blow to her throat, the anger in the surviving woman's eyes melted into a frantic mixture of raw hatred and despair. Using the ground for support, she scrambled to her feet, furiously scraping her short swords together to produce a shrill, grating noise. Bamsı, however, didn't lose his composure in the slightest; he waited with his blades at the ready by his sides, Elrohir's warning about the poison still ringing in his ears.
In a blind fit of rage, the Witch Elf darted forward, swinging her swords in a vicious crossways strike aimed straight at Bamsı's chest. To counter this assault, Bamsı raised his right blade, clashing steel against steel. As the resulting sparks flared and faded for a brief moment in the darkness, he launched a swift, calculated counterattack toward the woman's exposed ribs with his left blade. The Elf tried to evade the strike, leaping back with the agility of a serpent, but Bamsı had absolutely no intention of granting her that chance.
Planting his feet firmly on the ground, he continued to bear down heavily on his opponent. The Dark Elf swung her poisoned swords with a reckless, yet deadly speed; Bamsı parried each thrust with immense, chilling composure, missing the venomous edges by mere millimeters. Finally, he seized the exact moment he was looking for—trapping one of her swords upward with his own blade. This was the critical opening he had been waiting for. With his other free blade, he delivered a clean, decisive thrust without a single moment of hesitation. The sharp steel plunged viciously into the woman's heart.
The Witch Elf faltered, her breath caught in her throat in a fleeting moment of disbelief. When her eyes met Bamsı's uncompromising, hardened gaze, she knew that everything was over. Only a muffled, hollow groan escaped her lips. As her knees gave way and she slowly toppled over onto her side, Bamsı withdrew his blade in a single fluid motion, violently flicking the blood off the steel toward the ground.
After laying his final enemy low, the large warrior shook his weapons clean and looked around the battlefield. There was a glaring look of disappointment written across his face. He grumbled inwardly, deeply upset that the epic clash he had been anticipating had ended so abruptly.
"… Was that it, then? That wouldn't even fill the gap in my teeth…"
This burly man, who loved the chaotic euphoria of battle more than anything else in the world, stared down at the corpses with resentful eyes, looking very much like a grumpy child whose favorite toy had just been snatched away. Right at that moment, the raspy, exhausted voice of Elrohir, still leaning heavily against the rock, broke the silence.
"Warrior... Do not relax just yet. More are coming up the slope behind me."
The very second he heard this warning, Bamsı's eyes lit up brightly; not a single trace of his former grumpiness remained. He instantly lunged forward with renewed, vibrant energy, slowly craning his head over the edge of the boulder to take a stealthy peek down the steep incline. But at that exact second, a Dark Elf climbing up from below popped his head out from the other side of the very same rock to check the situation above. Bamsı and the Dark Elf came practically nose-to-nose. Stunned by this abrupt, utterly absurd encounter, the two simply blinked, staring blankly into each other's eyes for a few split seconds. As soon as the shockwave passed, both of their reflexes kicked into overdrive.
Rather than trying to awkwardly swing a sword in such a confined space, Bamsı swiftly dropped the blade in his right hand, opened his palm wide, and swung it violently toward the left side of the Dark Elf's face. The Dark Elf, meanwhile, had opened his mouth as wide as humanly possible, yelling at the top of his lungs to alert his allies below.
"ENEMY REINFORCE—"
SLAP!
The smack was so thunderous and heavy that Elrohir, standing right next to Bamsı, felt a strange, empathetic sting on his own cheek just from hearing the sheer force of it, even though he couldn't fully see what had happened. The Dark Elf on the receiving end of this devastating slap was experiencing absolute shock; between his beet-red cheek and the momentary concussion induced by the strike, he lost his balance entirely and tumbled backward into the void. The man began to roll helplessly, head over heels, down the steep slope.
The other Dark Elves climbing the incline froze for a few seconds, utterly bewildered as they watched their screaming comrade tumbling down toward them. They stared with empty eyes at the falling man for a moment, then looked up toward the crest of the hill. Realizing the immediate danger, they quickly jolted into action and scrambled to take cover behind the nearest boulders. Down below, the archers wasted no time; they drew their bows tight and unleashed a relentless rain of arrows at the exact spot where Bamsı had peeked his head out.
Right before the arrows came whizzing by, Bamsı yanked his head back into cover, crouched down beside Elrohir, and let out a booming laugh that echoed throughout the entire valley.
"HAHAHAHA! MORE ENEMIES! I'M GOING TO HAVE SO MUCH FUN TODAY!"
Elrohir stared blankly at this man who was crouching beside him, roaring with joyful laughter while they were practically face-to-face with death. He realized with absolute certainty that this human was truly abnormal the very moment he delivered that slap and burst into that maniacal laugh. Heaving a deep, weary sigh, he voiced his burning curiosity.
"Warrior, what is your name?"
Bamsı cheerfully twirled his thick, scimitar-like mustache, looking as delighted as if he had just eaten a magnificent feast and was savoring the very taste of life itself. He answered with a broad, genuine smile spreading across his scarred face.
"My name is Bamsı, my lord! I hail from the Kipchak Tribe, under the Khuzait Realm."
Hearing these strange, foreign words, Elrohir blinked in astonishment and searched his memory.
'Kipchak? Khuzait? I know the entirety of Middle-earth, yet I have never heard of any faction or kingdom bearing these names,' he thought to himself.
However, their current life-or-death predicament was hardly the time for a history or geography lesson; the Elf prince swiftly pushed these thoughts from his mind and asked the most pressing question.
"I am deeply grateful to you, but why are you helping us, Bamsı? This is an Elven affair."
Hearing Elrohir's solemn question, Bamsı merely offered a light, carefree chuckle, before explaining with his usual, laid-back demeanor.
"I am a warrior under the command of Lord Igris. When your wounded falcon found him, he rushed to your aid, and we simply followed him."
Hearing this entirely unexpected name, Elrohir's eyes widened in sheer, unadulterated shock.
"Igris?! He is here?"
It was not only him; Elladan, who was sitting exhausted on the ground just opposite them, reacted similarly and desperately tried to stir. But he was so utterly drained and riddled with dark poison that not a single word could escape his trembling lips. Bamsı, on the other hand, calmly nodded in confirmation. Then, he slowly stood up from his crouch, grabbed Elrohir by the collar of his tunic, and effortlessly pulled the prince up toward him.
"Aye, he should be around here somewhere. My lord Igris arrived here before us; he must have already engaged the enemy by now."
Bamsı dragged the great Elven Prince Elrohir as if he were hauling a burlap sack stuffed with hay, bringing him right next to his brother, Elladan, and carefully leaning his back against the cold, unyielding rock. Elrohir, whose mind was still desperately trying to process what he had just heard, suddenly latched onto Bamsı's earlier words and shouted in utter bewilderment.
"WAIT! LORD?! WHAT IN THE WORLD IS THAT MAN UP TO NOW!"