++++++ I do not own the Hobbit or any affiliated characters apart from my OC. All rights belong to Tolkien ++++++

Eleven

I fell silent whilst I stood there, staring into the darkness. I had heard Radagast speak about the Necromancer but as a whole I knew very little about him as a being in general. "What would the Necromancer want with me?" I questioned.

The Great Goblin laughed. "We don't ask…we just do as we are told. When the Necromancer asks us to acquire an item, we do as we are asked." As he spoke to me, one of the Goblins picked up Thorin's sword and slid it a few inches out of its sheath. He gasped and threw down the sword. It landed in the view of all the Goblins shrieked in terror and rage at the same time they retreated from the sword. "I know that sword!" the Great Goblin yelled. "It is the Goblin-Cleaver-the Biter, the blade that sliced a thousand necks. Slash them! Beat them! Kill them! Kill them all! Cut off his head!"

"NO!" I screamed as the Goblins surrounded me and started pulling me away from the company. "THORIN! KILI! FILI! LET ME GO!" Where was Gandalf?!

Suddenly there was a massive explosion of bright light and the sounds vibrating off the walls fell muted as a shockwave ripped through the area, flinging Goblins in the air. We were all knocked off our feet and when the light faded away a shadowy figure made itself known through the darkness. It was Gandalf. There he stood holding his staff and Glamdring in the other. Light slowly began to return to the area as everyone looked up, recovering from the shock.

"TAKE UP ARMS!" Gandalf shouted. "FIGHT! FIGHT!"

I didn't need to be told twice.

I drew Narylfiel and Mornenion before diving straight into the fight. The duel blades were incredibly easy to fight with, had it been possible, they would have cut through air itself. The Goblins attacked us with force and numbers, I dare say it would appear that they would win and I wouldn't get the answers that I was hoping to get from Gandalf. What did the Necromancer want with me? I'm just an Elf, a nobody compared to some of the powerful Elves out there. I slashed my glowing blades through Goblin after Goblin but still they poured upon us like a rushing tide.

"Follow me!" Gandalf shouted. "QUICKLY! RUN!"

I followed up behind Gandalf at the end of the line, taking out any who came from behind whilst Thorin charged a head like a true King. Through pathways and rickety suspended bridges, the company ran, fighting Goblins as they came at us. If we stopped for even a moment there would be none of us left and poor Bilbo was out there alone.

"GOBLINS!"

I glanced up just in time to find several Goblins swinging on ropes right at us. With lightning fast reflexes, I sheathed my blades and drew my bow, firing arrow after arrow at the Goblins and never missing my mark. Say what you want about the Elves but we are expert marksmen, the best in all of Middle-Earth.

Someone shouted my name, I was unsure who but I followed the sounds of my allies as we ran through the narrow halls and across the unstable bridges to find a way out of this madness.

A head of us I could see a bridge that went between to walls of the cavern but as we raced to cross it, the bridge started to splinter and the Great Goblin broke through from underneath the wood. He pulled himself up onto the bridge as more Goblins surrounded us on all sides. We were trapped.

"You though you could escape me?" he laughed. The Great Goblin swung his mace at Gandalf several times causing him to stumble backwards into the Dwarves. "Do you know what it is that travels with you? Give me Thorin, King under the Mountain and the Elf and I'll let you go free."

Gandalf was silent.

In all the years I had known him, silence from the wizard told me only one thing-he knew exactly what was going on.

"What are you going to do now, wizard?"

Gandalf leapt forward and struck the Great Goblin in the eye with his staff before he took a step forward and sliced his sword across the creature's belly. He fell to his knees and when Gandalf swung his sword straight through the Great Goblins neck. The weight of the huge Goblin plus the company started the bridge shaking. The next thing I knew, the section of the bridge broke out from underneath us and we fell straight through the crevice into the darkness. I reached out for the first thing I could find and blindly clung to whatever or whoever I had grabbed. We hit the ground with a gigantic thud that echoed throughout the cavern as wood and timber buried us. When I opened my eyes I found that I had been clinging onto Thorin like a child.

I wrenched my arm away. "Sorry, Thorin."

All he did was smirk.

I pulled myself up out of the wood and started looking around for my bow. I found it lying broken in two not far from where I had landed. I swore in my head and picked the bow up as Gandalf started ushering us away from the swarm of Goblins that were pouring over the rocks.

"There is only one thing that will save us!" Gandalf shouted. "Daylight! Come on! Here, on your feet!" He glanced at my broken bow and frowned. "Come now, we have no time to mourn."

I looked at Gandalf and held the broken bow close to me as we ran from the caves. Soon we broke out into the daylight, past pine trees and boulders. We stopped almost halfway down the mountain and Gandalf started counting us but froze when he came to Bilbo.

"Where's Bilbo? Where is our Hobbit? Where is our Hobbit?!"

"Curse the Halfling! Now he's lost?"

"I thought he was with Dori!"

"Don't blame me!" Dori argued.

"Well, where did you last see him?" Gandalf demanded to know.

"I think I saw him slip away, when they first collared us," Nori confessed.

"What happened exactly? Tell me!" the wizard shouted.

"I'll tell you what happened," Thorin growled. "Master Baggins saw his chance and he took it! He's though of nothing but his soft bed and his warm heart since first he stepped out of his door! We will not be seeing our Hobbit again. He is long gone."

"No, he isn't," came the familiar voice of Bilbo.

We all spun around as Bilbo stepped out from behind a tree, hand in pocket.

Gandalf breathed a sigh of relief as soon as he saw the Hobbit. "Bilbo Baggins! I've never been so glad to see anyone in my life!"

"Bilbo, we'd given up!" Kili chuckled. Ever the optimist.

"How on earth did you get past the Goblins?" Fili grinned.

"Does it matter?" I cut in. I dropped my broken bow on the ground beside me. "Just be thankful that he's back and let that be the end of it."

Thorin stared at me. "It matters, Falathiel. I want to know-why did you come back?"

"Look," Bilbo sighed. "I know you doubt me, I know you always have. And you're right, I often think of Bag End. I miss my books. And my armchair. And my garden. See, that's where I belong. That's home. And that's why I came back, cause you don't have one. A home. It was taken from you. But I will help you take it back if I can."

I walked over to Gandalf who looked back over the mountain, searching for an attack that would sure come at any moment. "We need to talk."

"About?" he frowned.

"What does the Necromancer want with me?" I demanded to know. I grabbed his arm and forced him to face me. "Mithrandir, what does the Necromancer want with me?"

He paused. "We cannot speak of this now."

"WE SPEAK OF IT RIGHT NOW!" I yelled at him.

Everyone turned their attention to us.

"WE SPEAK OF THIS RIGHT NOW, MITHRANDIR WE SPEAK OF THIS RIGHT NOW!" I snapped. "Radagast said that there was a Necromancer in Mirkwood and Lady Galadriel told me that there is a great evil in Eryn Lasgalen. They are one in the same are they not?"

Gandalf pursed his lips together.

"What is a Dark Elf?" I questioned. "Aside from the obvious description in the race title-what am I, Mithrandir? Why would Lady Galadriel tell me that the dangers of this quest will twist the very fabric of my being? She said that in Eryn Lasgalen I will find evil that will either make me or break me."

Gandalf would have answered me if not for the sound of howling wolves in the distance.

Thorin gripped his sword. "Out of the frying pan…"

"…and into the fire," Gandalf finished. "Run! RUN!"