AN: I thank everyone for their kind words! Your loyalty inspires me to write. :) (sorry if my dwarvish is wrong. I only have basic knowledge of the language so I'm mostly going off of a dwarven dictionary and using basic syntax.) I would have made this chapter longer, but I've managed to catch a bug of some sort and my brain is all loopy on medicine.

Chapter 10

"No!" Din pounded on the trapdoor to no avail.

"That is no use. The door is sealed by goblin technology," said Gandalf behind her. The cave still reeked of sulfur from the spell he had cast to kill the handful of goblins.

"Goblin technology?" Din scoffed. "They're barbaric! How effective can their technology be?"

"Goblins delight in devices that help them cause pain. They do not make beautiful things, but they do make clever ones and they rely on surprising their enemies by hiding behind such doors."

Din exhaled a sigh through her nose. "Alright. What do we do?" she asked. Gandalf squeezed past her in the tight space and she stepped back to give him room. He studied the wall, muttering incantations while she paced impatiently behind. Along with the dwarves, the goblins had taken all of their belongings as well.

Gandalf had had the sense to grab his sword and staff before the onslaught but all Din had was her Silmaril. There would only be so much she would be able to do with it in a fight and that was assuming she could get it to work on command rather than out of panic.

Gandalf looked back at her over his shoulder, his grey eyes intense in the luminescent glow of his staff. "Are you ready?" Din shifted on her feet in uncertainty, but nodded. There was no time for second-guessing while her friends were being carried away by goblins.

The loud clunk of a mechanism behind the door suggested the success of Gandalf's incantation. She sprinted to his side and they gave the door a hefty push and it swung open on it's hinges with a groan. The ghastly gaggle of goblins beyond nearly startled a scream out of her but Gandalf was ready. The wizard cast the same spell he had used before and with a loud crack and a brilliant flash the goblins fell dead. The stench of sulfur burned Din's nostrils. It was likely that the goblins had been left to defend the entrance but they had no real defense against wizard magic. Such magic would be much more risky below, however, as the volume would draw too much attention. Din only hoped he had other offensive spells in his repertoire.

Gandalf peeked inside to make certain there were no more and at seeing the orange light of torches beyond, Gandalf extinguished his staff. "You should put that out as well," he said, gesturing to her Silmaril.

"I can do that?" she asked in bafflement.

Gandalf chuckled. "Of course. It will do what you desire."

"No, it won't," she argued. "It has only ever worked when I was panicked."

"Exactly," responded the wizard. He turned to face her more directly and placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. "The stone is connected with you. It is not a mere tool, it is part of you. You cannot simply tell it what to do, you must feel it. It will help if you try imagining what you want it to do."

Din chewed the inside of her lip. "I think I understand," she said doubtfully. Nonetheless, she closed her eyes and envisioned the stone growing dimmer, taking a deep breathe. As she did she felt the fire within her become quiet as well until she found an odd sense of calm. Gandalf made a victorious sound and she opened her eyes to find the stone lifeless in her palms. If she did not know better, she would say it was merely a pretty gem.

Gandalf turned back to the trap door. Once he was sure there were no goblins ahead, he moved inside. He did not glance back at Din, forcing her to move after him without hesitation. She tried to move quietly as she trudged after him but stealth was not a quality known among dwarves. The pile of dead goblins left her with an assortment of weapons to choose from and she settled on a rather nasty looking short sword with a serrated edge near the handle.

The tunnel was an ill fit for Gandalf and he had to stoop a great deal. His hat still scratched against the roof of the rugged pass. The place reeked of stagnant water, goblin sweat, and other types of filth that she dare not think about lest she lose her supper. With all the excitement of having prisoners, they hadn't left the tunnel well guarded. They may have clever machines and weapons great for torture, but they were still imbeciles, Din mused.

The space opened up into a large cavern with many narrow paths around the edge and connected by crude bridges of rope and wooden planks. Gandalf paused and hunched beside Din. Quietly, they devised a plan.

Din rolled the last boulder over to the edge of the path with her feet. Sweat dripped from her face and dampened various areas of her body. With it in place, she unfastened the spare length of the ropes from one of the bridges and tied it securely around the boulder.

Peering down below to watch for the signal, Din waited impatiently in her position. On the central platform in the near distance below, innumerable goblins swarmed her friends. They had been brought before a large fat goblin who she could only assume was their king, given the boorish iron crown atop his misshapen head and his peculiar looking "thorne". Tensions seemed to be rising and Din's entire body tensed. Where was Gandalf?

Just then, all the torches in the chamber went out, plunging them into darkness. Where the fire had been on the central platform, a pillar of blue smoke emerged. The blue flash of Gandalf's sword sliced through the king goblin and his subjects scattered in a clamor of animalistic shrieks.

Din gave the boulder a push with her feet and it slid over the edge. It disappeared into the darkness until she heard it crash into the goblins attempting to escape along their narrow aisle. She had aimed it away from the platform in the middle for risk of endangering her friends, but it would hopefully cause plenty of chaos. There was no time to waste as she ran to her next boulder by the dimmed light from her stone and repeated the process. She paused at the third, a smaller rock meant only to support her weight, and she positioned herself by sitting on the edge of the path. She was careful how she held her sword so she would not accidentally impale herself and slipped the Silmaril into her pocket so it would not be lost. She had lined up the shot beforehand so she would not need to aim in the dark.

She took a deep breath before pushing the rock off the path. She held fast to the ropes as her weight was yanked off with it. A sickening sense of weightlessness passed through her until the rope tensed. The descent felt longer than it probably was and she held her breath the whole way. Pulling the ropes toward her and extending her feet executed a sort of battering ram effect when she finally side swept through the line of goblins that remained.

Din leaped from her unusual device of transportation and drew her stone. Its light blinded the pair of goblins that still stood between her and the rest of the company. Luckily they had concealed themselves in the cave for so long that the glare of the Silmaril against the darkness staggered them, giving her the chance to run her sword through them and kick them from the bridge before they could recover. She let the last goblin fall over the side of the path and descend down into the abyss and sprinted to her comrades.

"Time to go," she said as she stuffed her sword into its bulky goblin sheath. All of them seemed unharmed, from what she could tell by the light of the Silmaril. They greeted her with amorous pats and hugs. The glow of Thorin's recovered elven blade brightened her heart when he strode to her side.

"Which way?" he asked. She searched for the glow of Gandalf's blade, finding it at the end of the second path behind the king's 'throne'.

"There."

"Quickly, before the torches relight," Gandalf called to them. Din went across first and the rest filed behind in a line, each keeping their hands on the shoulders of the person in front of them so they would not fall off. Din paused at the other side to catch her breath and Gandalf counted as each member passed him until all were accounted for. Adrenaline caused her entire body to tremble with an eagerness to keep moving.

Fingers touched hers for the briefest of moments and she looked up at Thorin. "They will not be far behind," he said. She nodded and, sure enough, the horrible squeals and cries of goblins began to echo around the cavern again. Thorin lead her to catch up with the others, who had delayed to wait.

Dwarves can move at a tremendous pace when under the right incentive and Bilbo had to be carried so he would not fall behind. But goblins, it seemed were faster. They knew the tunnels better, after all. Their cries grew louder and louder until Din could hear lots of goblin feet slapping the floor behind them. The torches blazed anew and the sudden flood of light startled not only the dwarves, but the goblins around the last corner as well.

She did not notice Dori, with Bilbo on his back, trip into a faceplant until she was tripping over his limbs. Her head smacked into a rock. Though it was not enough to knock her unconscious, her vision began to blur. She rolled onto her back aware only of the army of goblins thundering their way and that her arms were being drawn over someone's shoulders. She thought it might be Dwalin. He hoisted her onto his back and made a run for it past the pile of hesitant dwarves.

Just then, Gandalf unlit all the torches again—this time he would keep them unlit—and sent another bolt of lightning down the tunnel. She was only vaguely aware of Thorin and Gandalf fighting in the back with Glamdring and Orcrist glowing brilliant blue. The screams of the goblins grew distant as Dwalin and the others moved farther down the tunnel. Din's stone, still glowing in her hand, gave them just enough light to move by, but navigating the seemingly endless passages of the goblin tunnels seemed impossible. After what was probably hours of dead ends and turnarounds, a faint white light at the end came into view.

The fresh air outside cooled her heated blood as Dwalin set her down against the bark of a pine tree. Oin rushed over to tend to her head wound.

"It is not very deep but you've lost a good bit of blood," said he. He ripped part of his sleeve and pressed it to her head.

"I'm sorry," she muttered for being so useless during the escape. One of Dwalin's large hands patted her shoulder.

"Worry not, zunug u'zagh." She looked up at him, startled. Worry not, courageous warrior. Coming from an old warrior like Dwalin, this compliment had much deeper meaning. He was acknowledging her, not only as a fellow dwarf, but as an ally in battle. Very few female dwarves had been acknowledged as such since the dwarves had come to Middle-Earth as they were usually kept safe inside their mountain halls. Glancing around at the rest of her comrades, they all seemed to think the same thing; she was one of them. At the absence of one pair of eyes, however, her heart stopped.

"Wait, where is Bilbo?" she asked. Gandalf straightened at her exclamation. In all the excitement he apparently had not noticed the absence of the quiet little hobbit.

"Dori, did you not pick him back up after you dropped him?" Gandalf towered over the dwarf, who stared right back in indignation.

"It was dark and I had goblins biting at my ankles. I thought someone else scooped him up and there was hardly time for counting," Dori argued. Din fumbled to her feet, her head throbbing, and made for the cave entrance.

"Where do you think you're going?" asked Bifur, grabbing hold of her arm.

"To look for Bilbo. We can't just leave him in there. It's our fault he even came on this journey," she said. "I will not leave him to be eaten by goblins. If the rest of you will not come, Gandalf and I will go. We fared well enough on our own."

Kili blocked her path when she moved to the mountain again. "Yes, you did, but he might already be dead." She looked at her comrades and they all appeared to be of similar minds.

"I can't believe this! We're supposed to look after one another." She looked last at Thorin. "Please," she said. After a tense moment, he looked away.

"I cannot risk the lives of my company for one burglar."

"Then it's a good thing you won't need to," said a little voice behind her. She spun to find Bilbo, his hair flattened with sweat and his face pink from running. Din pulled him into a hug that startled him. "Oh, heh, I'm glad you're alright, too." Gandalf and the other dwarves crowded round to greet him in joyous relief. It was a short-lived reunion, however. Danger always seemed to be lurking around them.

The howls of wargs sounded in the near distance.