Disclaimer: Majority of the characters, places and terms etc. used belong to JRR Tolkien; I am simply borrowing them for a while.

Author Note: Apologies for any inaccuracies; but really this whole story is going to be one giant inaccuracy because the line of Durin live. Because I can't let Thorin go. I just can't.

Chapter 1 - The Pits

Mahal, in your mercy, please take me away.

Sigrún had her eyes closed firmly shut. She wished she could close her ears the way she could close her eyes…but there was nothing she could do to stop herself from the hearing the shrieks that pierced the air, day and night.

She had been shackled and shivering in the Pits since yesterday, and she knew that it would not be long now. Those who were taken to the Pits never returned, and after what she reckoned to be nearly five weeks of imprisonment, she was resigned to her death. The only thing she could pray for now was that she may die from cold or thirst before she was taken to the Ring.

She could not recall how many days it had been since she had eaten, and her thirst was so sharp it felt like razors in her throat. She welcomed the darkness whenever she slipped into an unconscious state, and felt her whole body ache and moan whenever she was dragged into consciousness once more.

You would think they would find it more amusing to have us at least half-alive, for us to still have some fight in us.

But then again, if Sigrún had learned anything about Orcs these past weeks, it was that whilst they loved a good fight, they loved the smell of fear even more. Like the heat of a forge fire was for a dwarf, fear and misery were for Orcs; their weakness for it was ingrained.

Mahal, protect Lís and Dagrún. May the powers that be see them follow a different fate.

Had it not been for her thoughts of her cousins and her burning desire to return to them, Sigrún was sure she would not have lasted even a week in the camp. Every slow, painful hour of every long, torturous day, Sigrún had thought of Lís and her little Dagrún. She had closed her eyes, drowning her mind in her memories of her beloved kin, and their happy years with Boden and Rúna.

Mahal, in your mercy, may they never meet an end such as this.

At first Sigrún had been vigilant. Sequestered with two dozen other captives in an outdoor pen like an animal, Sigrún had fervently tried to get her bearings. She had huddled with the others, but refused to join them in their misery and hopelessness. She had watched the watch guards, their numbers, the hours at which they changed. She had stubbornly tried to deduce the layout of the camp, judging distances from the surrounding noises and the wracking her mind for details from the brief glimpses she had gotten, whilst being dragged into the camp by her captor.

But as days turned into weeks, Sigrún accepted that escape was nigh on impossible. It always had been. She was chained and shackled, confined to a yard; a yard that she had no way of knowing if it was was near or far to any gate. As the number of captives dwindled, new ones arrived. They had been left to sit there, in the squalor of their own waste, cramped and filthy. Every now and then, food scraps would be thrown at them as well as skins of water. Some of them had tried to whisper comforts to each other, praying a wandering patrol would stumble across the camp and save them all.

But as the days wore on, despair gnawed at their souls like the hunger did their bellies, and any sense of kinship from mutual suffering disappeared. It had almost been a relief to be moved from the Den to the Pits, where at least she wasn't crammed in with all the others. Whilst the presence of other bodies had kept her marginally warmer, the smell of unwashed flesh and excrement had been nauseating.

Here at least, shackled to her own little bit of wall, with the wooden door of the Ring looming ever before her, she could turn on her back and close her eyes and pretend she was somewhere else.

Sigrún had done her best to block the sound of jeering from the Orcs, as they held their next 'entertainment' in the Ring. Their cries of 'the Ring' and 'the Breaker' had gnarled around other unintelligible words spat out in Orkish, and she willed herself not to imagine who, or what, the Breaker was. The Ring she had figured out pretty quickly. She had heard the choruses of taunts and the shouts of glee, and knew they were concentrated to one side of the camp. Yesterday, after being moved, she learned that this area, this Ring, was only a hundred paces away. Being forced to listen to the cries of each prisoner as they were tortured to death was agony for Sigrún; a kind of pain in her innermost being she had not realised it was possible to feel.

The prisoner to her left, shackled to his own metal ring, had tried to talk to her once or twice. But the burning thirst made speaking painful, and she could do little but make enough sound to let him know she heard him. Had she been able to, she thought talking would have been a welcome reprieve. For while at times she wanted nothing more than to have the ground open up and bury her, at other times she felt like being able to talk to another living creature would have been a comfort.

Yesterday, in an attempt to keep her sanity, Sigrún had pretended that she could speak. She had pretended that she was sitting upright, and that the cold didn't sting, and the hunger didn't claw, and her thirst didn't tear. She would talk to the fellow prisoner, the hulking, hunched figure chained to her left. Maybe she would ask him about his family, whether he had travelled far, where his homeland was. She would tell him about her father, her childhood years walking hill and dale by his side. She would tell him about Erlendur, about Boden and Rúna. She would tell him about beautiful little Dagrún, her love of lost things and her penchant for trouble. And last, but not least, she would tell him about Lís. About how she found her all those years ago, about how she had freed her from a camp not unlike this one. How she had found a kindred spirit; two lost and lonely dams, with nothing to their names but a steely determination to survive.

Not once had Lís spoken to Sigrún about her time in the camp. She had been little more than a damling when Sigrún found her, and Sigrún had always thought that with time, Lís would recover enough to share the days of her imprisonment.

Foolishly, Sigrún had thought it would not be unlike drawing poison from a wound; that with time and patience, she could draw the foul memories from Lís. It would leave her raw, but then at least she would eventually be able to heal. She had at times even wished she had been in that camp too, that she had shared in that nightmare; all so that she could truly understand how it is was for Lís.

Perhaps this is fate's way of punishing me for such naivety. Mahal, forgive me Lís.

Sigrún remembered her father telling her that you had to find a way to pour out your feelings, or they would consume you from the inside out. For Sigrún, as a dwarfling, the most natural way for her to express herself had been through words, through stories and through song. As she grew she learned other ways to express herself; she learned how to weave her emotions through gems and metal, through intricately woven bands and interlocking geometric links. Even later, when there were no metal or gems to be had, Sigrún learned how to infuse her feelings into simpler things like a loaf of freshly baked bread, or a posy of herbs, or a healing poultice.

There were a thousand ways to say I am sorry, or I have missed you, or I love you. But words themselves never ceased to hold a special importance for Sigrún; as if speaking about feelings turned them from a momentary sense, a fleeting touch, into something more solid – something more permanent.

It was why, even though she knew Lís found it much easier to express herself through gestures, she had always held faith that one day she would find the words to communicate all that she wanted to say.

But now…now Sigrún understood. As she lay on her side, her ankles and wrists bound, her body covered in mud, grime, sweat, and Mahal only knows what else, unable to do anything but wait for her inevitable death…she finally understood.

There are no words.

The next day at dawn, a new noise disturbed what had become the familiar pattern of the camp. A shriek pierced the air, but it was not the tormented scream of a captive. It was the terrible cry of an Orc, and one in mortal pain. What felt like only a heartbeat later, there was a great chorus of screeching, and it was met with an enormous roar. Armour crashed against armour, and Sigrún heard what she knew was the ringing of swords in battle; metal clashing against metal.

Sigrún lay as if frozen, desperately willing her mind to focus – to try to distinguish exactly what these new sounds were; or rather, who may be causing them.

But it was useless.

All her mind could process was a terrifying cacophony of cries in Orkish, the metal meeting of metal, the thunder of heavy footsteps.

Sigrún had heard that Orcs of one kind sometimes clashed with Orcs of another; that they would slay their opponents, steal their weapons and any valuable possessions, and burn all that remained. But the voices she could hear in the air did not sound like Orc voices…they were deep, rumbling, and thunderous. Her mind was spinning, and she lifted her head to look at the man to her left. Their eyes met, and she could read the mingled look of fear, despair and just a trace of hope in his eyes. She was sure the same look was in her own.

It was then that she heard it.

A voice, deep and resonating, crying out in Khuzdul,

Baruk Khazâs! Khazâd ai-mênu!