Chapter 2

Din stirred restlessly in bed, both unable and unwilling to return to sleep, even though she knew she needed rest. She was having dreams of Thorin again; That he was trapped in a dreary snow-covered wasteland and constantly fighting for his life against all sorts of horrific monsters. After 83 years, one would expect her not to feel guilty anymore, but she was often plagued with these dreams as if her mind were dead-set on tormenting her with her failings. After rolling from one side to the other a dozen times and being unable to quiet her mind, she rose from bed and decided to use her restlessness to exercise. This was her routine, now, whenever it became a problem; Relentless, exhausting exercise that made her body scream for her to stop. But she couldn't rest until the anxiety stopped eating at her stomach, until she was too sore to think about it. She slumped against the floor, her drained mind finally allowing her to drift back into a dreamless sleep.

"Aunt Din, wake up." Din returned to groggy consciousness when someone shook her.

"What do you want, Kili?" she grumbled. She lifted a hand to rub her tired eyes, making no move to rise from the uncomfortable floor.

"Trouble sleeping again? You know it's not healthy to work yourself this hard when you can't sleep." She mumbled something noncommittal as he helped her stand and lead her to the bed. She propped her feet up on the frame and sat with her head in her hands. It would be a struggle to stay awake during duty, that was certain. "I found this under your door." Kili held out a small flattened scroll, unmarked with any signature or wax stamp of identification. Who could it be from? She accepted it and set it on the nightstand, resigned to find out when she did not have company.

"Was there something you needed?" Din asked the lad.

Kili shifted on his feet. He looked a lot like his namesake except that he had inherited his father's flaxen hair and his mother's green eyes. He had never been a trickster like his father and uncle but rather seemed to take more after his mother. "I, uh . . ." He breathed a sigh and straightened himself, ready to be forthwith. "I can understand Mother wanting me to stay, but why did you tell my father not to let me join our forces?"

Din gaped. "H-he told you?"

"Of course he told me. I've looked up to you my entire life, always asking to hear about your journeys. Now you're the one keeping me from finding my own."

"I'm only worried after your safety, Kili. You're still young. There will be plenty of time to make a name for yourself later."

Kili's brows crinkled together in anger. "This isn't even about me, it's about him isn't it? Eighty-three years later and you're still trying to save him. But he's gone, Aunt Din. Uncle Kili is gone. And while you're stuck in the past trying to protect him, you're keeping me from making a life of my own. But it didn't work. Father has already given me permission to go." Din gasped, her eyes widened. It was done then? He was to become a soldier and fight what orcs remained in Middle Earth? Kili strode to the door but paused in the frame. "I always hoped you would support me. I idolized you . . ." she heard him say quietly before he disappeared.

The dwarf lass sat in silence for a long time. He was right about all of it. It was unfair to protect Kili so strictly just because he reminded her of his namesake. But that didn't stop the tight ball of dread from forming in her stomach at the thought of young Kili in battle. Perhaps it was time to bow out and stop meddling in Fili's affairs.

Now that she was alone, she plucked the letter from her nightstand and her idle curiosity turned into shock. She gasped in surprise. It was Gandalf asking for a secret meeting. She hadn't even been aware that he was coming. Then again, that was probably why he was asking for a secret meeting.

Din stepped cautiously into the tomb. It had been a long time since she had come down here. A very long time. She held the Silmaril out, letting its light illuminate the room. A second source of light ignited from a staff to the left of King Thorin's crypt. The wizard's grey-blue eyes shone bright in the white light.

"Why did you want me to meet you here, Gandalf?" She asked.

The wizard looked down at the crypt, his fingers tapping nervously against his white staff, searching for the words to begin. "I do not believe he is truly dead."

Din clenched her fingers into fists. "Why in the name of Durin would you make such a claim after so many years. I was there when he died, Gandalf. You know that." She turned to leave, boiling with anger, but guilt settled in her gut. "I know you mean well, but no good can come from digging up such old wounds." She started to march out when the loud rumble of stone sliding against stone filled the room. Din turned to see the large slab atop Thorin's sarcophagus slide off from the force of one of Gandalf's spells.

"What are you doing?" She cried out in outrage as she bolted back over. Gandalf simply stared inside and she couldn't help looking as well, even though she knew it would horrify her to see Thorin's bones. But it was not his bones that she found. She gasped and gaped like a fool. Thorin's body remained unchanged. No, not unchanged. His skin was a colorless grey and his wounds were gone, replaced with scars as if he had simply healed over time. His hands were cupped on his chest, where the Arkenstone rested, glowing faintly. Other than Bilbo, no one outside the dwarves knew it had been buried with him. "What . . ." She could find no more words.

"Do you see the similarities?" Gandalf asked.

"Between what?" Din sputtered. The old man's glance slid to the glowing stone in her hand and she felt her eyes widen. She looked between it and the Arkenstone. It was similar, yes, but the Arkenstone shone with many colors and glittered due to a thousand small straight-edged facets. Her's was only a pale white-blue and the surface was smooth as if the flame it represented had smoothed its edges into glass.

"You think the Arkenstone is one of the Silmarils?"

"Not only that. I think it is bound to him the way yours is to you. Yours bonded with you when you were willing to sacrifice your own life to save Kili's when you were children. I believe the same thing happened when Thorin sacrificed himself for you at Erebor."

Din closed her eyes, trying to wrap her mind around this and failing in her attempt not to picture the sadness on Thorin's face when he had realized the only way to save her from Azog would be to leave her. "But how could he be alive?" Din asked. The pessimist in her balked. Surely that was too easy, too fortunate.

"It is more as if he sleeps rather than death; A stasis that sustains his body until his soul can be returned to it. I believe the stone stored his soul somewhere else."

Din could not pull her gaze from Thorin's still face. Despite the little voice inside her, she dared to hope, to imagine those blue eyes opening and looking on her once more. "If he truly slumbers, then we can wake him."

"It won't be easy. Only assuming what I have learned is even correct, I cannot guarantee your return from the Void."

"The Void?" Din frowned. He wanted to send her to hell?

"It is a place where all evil beings are sent after death, as they are not permitted in the afterlife, whatever that may be. I believe the Arkenstone sent Thorin there because it was the only place to put him. The only way to bring him back is to help him find what will probably be a copy of the Arkenstone that anchors him to that place. Once inside, you will also have to find your own stone."

"Find two small stones in a void of darkness. How difficult could that be?"

"It will be a challenge, to be sure, but you will have all the time you need. I found a spell that may be able to pull your soul from your body and send you there."

"May?"

A grim frown contorted Gandalf's face in a web of wrinkles. "I'm afraid no part of this comes without great danger to you. Know that if you die there, I suspect your body here will die as well rather than return your soul to it."

The risk didn't change her mind. "What do we need to do?" the lass asked.

Gandalf's grasp of his staff tightened. Was he nervous now that she had agreed? He cleared his throat. "You'll want to lie down." She nodded and lowered herself to the cold stone beside Thorin's sarcophagus. Before the old man could ask if she had it, she pulled her Silmaril from her pocket and grasped it firmly in her nervously sweating hands. Gandalf stooped and pressed chilled fingers to her forehead.

"Tell my uncles and everyone . . . I'm sorry if I do not come back."

Gandalf nodded solemnly. "This will be most unpleasant. I am sorry." She gave another stiff nod and after he filled his lungs with a deep breath, he began his incantation. There was a pause while the spell took effect. Then a pressure built in her chest as if a mountain were being pressed down on it. Din's body tensed and she could make no attempt to even gasp for air as her lungs seemed to have no room to expand. It didn't take more than a minute, but it felt like an hour before the world finally began to fade away.

White flakes clung to her eyelashes when Din pried her brown eyes open. She was on the ground, face-first in what looked like an endless vast of snow. Dark grey skies as far as the eye could see sent a flurry of snow. Did it ever cease, she wondered? Slowly, she pushed herself up to a seated position feeling unbelievably stiff. Grief welled inside her as she peered around a place she hadn't thought to be real. This was what she had been dreaming about all these years. She could have come sooner if she had only thought to look. The creatures he was always fighting were the dispatched souls of evil creatures slain on Middle-Earth. Din slumped further into the snow and felt her face contort to shed the tears she felt building behind her eyes.

"I'm so sorry, Thorin," she sobbed. Through her blurred vision in the far off distance she thought she caught glimpse of a figure approaching. She staggered to her feet. There was no way he had already found her, was there? She had almost dared to hope when another figure appeared further back, then another and another until a horde was sprinting across the snow toward her. Not Thorin. Orcs. How had they known she had arrived? She wondered in horror. She looked around wildly for anything she could use as a weapon, but of course there was nothing but snow. She turned to run the other way—if she couldn't fight them, maybe she could outrun them and hope they gave up—but more dark figures approached from other angles. She picked the side with the fewest and bolted.

When she neared the first monstrosity, its grotesque face contorting in unquenchable rage, she ducked under the unplanned swing of its crazed sword and disarmed it with a palm to the elbow to reverse it. She then lobbed off its head and returned her attention to the nearest approaching half dozen orcs. As she readied herself, the jagged blade in her hand began to glow white hot. She gaped. She could still use the Silmaril's power here? Perhaps the fact that it remained with her body was enough? Regardless, this fight had just gotten a lot simpler. She'd picked up some new tricks during the War of the Ring and unlike any of the battles she had been in, there was no one she had to worry about accidentally hurting. It was time to heat up this winter-held wasteland.

Din let the sword fall to the snow and gathered her magic within her. She crouched to one knee with her hands above her head, building a ball of fire. She kept it compressed even as it tried to grow and allowed the pressure to build so that as many of the orcs as possible would get near. Only when one was almost within arm's reach did she release the flame. A torrent of fire erupted like a horizontal powder bomb that killed any orc within over ten yards. She turned to the next largest group and began sprinting for them, then crouched as if she were about to leap. Streams of fire from the bottoms of her feet launched her into the air. She readied another bomb while she soared over many ugly heads, their eyes following her in bafflement. The orcs directly below her readied their blades to impale her when she came down, but with a thrust of her legs another plume of fire enveloped them. She kicked one out of her way so she could land on the ground while it flailed helplessly at the flames that clung to it. She then released the other fireball she had been compressing. Twenty more orcs fell and those that weren't dying started to flee through the massive puddle her fire had melted the snow into. Only once she was certain that none would double back for her did she stoop to rest her hands on her knees to catch her breath.

Footprints rippled into the water and she whirled on the enemy with hand poised to incinerate but her breath caught and her eyes widened. She would recognize that curtain of dark hair anywhere and the pale blue eyes that bore into hers made it impossible to move. Sweat had smeared blood down the sides of his face and the orcish armor he wore was badly damaged from constant battle. Orcrist in his hand, which glowed blue at the approach of orcs or goblins, was beginning to fade as the orcs fled further away.

Thorin seemed just as unable to move. "It is you!" he gasped. "Din . . ." Of all the things she felt upon seeing the love of her life—joy, love, guilt—none surprised her more than her embarrassment. It had, after all, been 83 years since last he had seen her and she had aged while he still looked as handsome as ever. She tucked her hair nervously behind one ear despite the counterproductive fact that this better revealed the laugh lines beside her eyes. Unable to look at him while he took in her appearance, she looked to the ground. After a pause he dropped Orcrist and a helmet she hadn't realized he had been holding and strode over to her. She looked up in time for his lips to meet hers in a passionate kiss.