Thorin scowls at the three of them and it occurs to Billana that she should, perhaps, be embarrassed about how affectionate she is being with his nephews, especially when Kili leans in to press his face against hers. Relief at finding her friends alive and well, however, doesn't allow it. His question, unfortunately, is a legitimate one that cuts their reunion short, and she looks up at Fili and Kili as she wonders whether they will try to explain or if she will have to change back and do it. She hopes that, at least, one of them will think to loan his coat to her if that becomes the case.
"Billana's magic does not just allow her to speak with and heal animals, Thorin," Gandalf says. "It also allows her to become any animal that she has shared the mind of. Not a bad ability for someone who is going to face a dragon." She shudders in Fili's arms.
Thorin nods, then steps closer and reaches a hand out to her. Billana flattens her ears and hisses.
"I think she might be a little upset with you, Uncle," Kili chuckles, relief colouring his tone. Then he stoops to grab her pack and holds his arms out to her. "Come on, we should find you somewhere private to change back," he adds.
"Private?" Thorin raises an eyebrow. "Surely she can do it with an audience?"
"No," Kili replies firmly with a shake of his head. "The same rules apply to Billana as they do to the Raven. The shift affects only the body, not the clothes." Thorin nods and she wonders how many times Kili has been forced to refer to himself that way just to make a point with his uncle or get him to listen.
"In that case," Balin steps forward, also reaching out to touch her and she allows it, purring at the gentle caress of his fingers, "I should be the one to accompany her."
Kili's colour changes and he moves to pass her pack to Balin. Howls split the air around them, her senses, exhausted from the amount of magic she has used, flare to life and she scrambles to get out of Fili's arms.
"No time," he tells her, opening his coat and tucking her inside. "Stay there, Kitten," he orders. "We've come too close to losing you today to risk doing it again."
Even if she were in her own form she would have no idea how to reply to that, so she settles herself inside his coat as best she can, thankful for the belt that holds it tight around his waist so that she only has to worry about being jostled around rather than slipping down. Mentally she notes that she never wants to do something like this again, using her claws to find some stability by clinging to his tunic even though she tries hard not to scratch him at the same time. He doesn't complain about it, but his normally soothing scent is thick with the sharp taste of fear and the sour notes of exhaustion.
She doubts that many of them have all that much left to give. It must have been quite the fight to get out of goblins clutches and many of them must be physically exhausted, let alone the magical exhaustion of the mages. Kili is probably the only one with anything left in him, given his claims of being the most powerful mage there, but he is hindered by Thorin's instructions that he keep his strength secret even now. Billana, for all her reserves and practice, will be lucky if she has even one change left in her now. After that her well of magic will have run dry and if she pushes too hard, whether she wants to or not, she will revert to hobbit form. It will be some days until she has the strength to change again.
She doesn't need to hear the wargs to know that they are getting closer, the sense of them tells her that they are very nearly on top of the Company. She can feel some others further back, and those must have riders, and she trembles against Fili at the sense of wrong that comes with at least one of them. There will be no elf patrol to help them this time, no quiet period of recovery in a safe haven where she can rest and centre her mind and thoughts. She has only just found the Company, just got her friends back and has just begun to realise what they might mean to her.
Fili's coat muffles much of what is happening, her ears are filled with the sound of his racing heart and the way his chest rumbles when he speaks to his brother. She clearly hears the order for them all to get into the trees, however, feels the way that the muscles in his chest and abdomen strain as he climbs while trying not to squash her. She feels the tree shudder, hears the angry snarls of the wargs reach her as their tree cracks and splinters, swaying beneath them. She will be crushed if she stays where she is, and she knows that Fili isn't holding on as tightly as he should out of fear of hurting her, so she climbs out. Fili shouts her name, tells her to go back where she was, but she ignores him, digging her claws into the branches so that she can hold on more tightly. She will not have him fall just because he was trying not to hurt her. Then she looks down at the wargs, putting all the contempt that she can into her gaze.
The tree falls and in the same moment her temper snaps. She leaps to the next one without a thought, moving so that she is resting on her pack and clinging to Kili's shoulder. She doesn't want to get lost or fall while she is distracted. The she turns her attention to the wargs, reaching for their minds and stamping down on her need to flinch away when she touches them. Their minds sting, are full of something twisted and wrong and it hurts, but she doesn't care. It is time for this to end.
-Enough!" She orders. The wargs snarl at her, fighting the compulsion to obey her. She lashes at them with a little of her remaining magic, feeling her form slip slightly as she takes that little bit more so that she can push a little harder. She wouldn't normally be so cruel but her friends are in danger and the creatures causing it are refusing to obey. -I said enough- she bellows mentally and the wargs yelp and draw back.
"Are you doing this?" Kili mutters, though he knows that she cannot reply.
-Who are you to command us?- One demands. -Our alpha will tear you apart-
-The alpha will fall under my will as surely as any other warg- she replies confidently. Laughter greets her.
-The alpha is no warg- they howl and snap out of her grip, attacking the tree with renewed vigour.
She slumps against Kili, too tired to try again and the wargs likely know it. They howl their triumph and charge the tree over and over and it is all she can do to cling to Kili.
"Hold tight," he whispers, "unless you've got enough left in you to become a bird?"
She can't answer, she has the energy but she doesn't want to leave. She can't leave them. Instead she nuzzles his cheek. She'll stay with him and she clings tighter when the wargs assault forces them all into the last remaining tree. Fire rages around them, though she has no idea how it started, and she looks to see Fili staring at both of them with something unreadable in his eyes. The tree collapses, flames lick towards them, the heat and smoke make her eyes water and her chest hurt and the three of them cling to a branch together.
"You have to do it, Kili," she hears Fili shout. "You have to change. Take Billana and go!"
"Not without you," Kili replies. "And Billana's nearly spent. You saw how she struggled with the wargs."
"She should have enough left for you both to get away from here. At least to the bottom," Fili shouts. "I'm not asking, Kili," he adds. "Take her, go home, forget the mountain."
"I'm not leaving you to die!" Kili snaps.
"You'll condemn Billana to the same fate, she can't possibly survive this if it comes down to a fight!"
"I'll give her the choice!" Kili screams into sudden silence and Billana turns her attention away from the brothers to the rest of the dwarves. They are all staring in horror at the mountain, at a great white orc atop a massive warg that approaches the tree roaring in it's own vile tongue. She tries to reach for the warg and her magic shrieks. Something about this feels wrong, deeply wrong.
Chaotic.
It burns through the warg and into the orc and she realises with horror that this is the alpha the pack were talking about. Something dark and terrible has bound the minds of the warg and orc together and that is how he has become the unchallenged alpha. Billana cannot reach the warg and she shudders against Kili as the orc bellows a challenge to Thorin.
A challenge that the idiot promptly takes up. The others scream and yell, Billana yowls. No matter whether Thorin wins against this creature or not, the rest of the orcs will kill them. This is a foolishness. He falls, she realises that no one can get to him and despair fills her as surely as it does the rest of the Company. Devastation colours Fili's face and he turns pleading eyes on her and Kili.
He's trying to send her away, she realises. He wants her to leave, even if Kili refuses, because he knows that she will be useless to them in whatever comes next. She can't leave. She won't. She realised under the mountain that these dwarves are all she has, that she is closer to Kili and Fili than she has ever been to anyone else and she refuses to leave them. If they are all to die then she will die with them because without them she has nothing. A glance at Gandalf, however, shows that he is looking at the sky as though waiting for something and she realises that perhaps the old fool has a plan to get them all out of this mess. She hopes so, because she is about to take a form that she hasn't dared to take since the Fell Winter. She would rather not die in that shape, she would rather not die with the memory of Fili realising that she is worthless to them now and trying to get rid of her. She leaps, bounding along the trunk of the tree and only distantly aware of both of the princes screaming her name, though Kili's voice is the loudest. She ignores them, changing between one leap and the next, launching herself using powerful hind legs so that she can close lethal jaws around the neck of the orc poised to kill Thorin, ripping out its throat.
She hasn't been a wolf since the Fell Winter, not since her mother died and she did what she had to in order to survive, staying a wolf for so long that she forgot who she really was. She hasn't taken this form since Gandalf forced her to change back and remember, made her promise never to take the form of a creature so far removed from a gentle hobbit again. She hates to disappoint the wizard but she hates the thought of her dwarves dying without hope more.
Billana stands over Thorin's prone form, hackles raised and teeth bared. She can smell his blood and hear his breath. As long as he lives she will guard him. The orcs get over their shock quickly, one lone wolf cannot hold them all off and she is smaller than the wargs. Her actions, however, have had the desired effect as the Company streams past her to come to Thorin's defence. They fight with everything that they have, as does she until a knife slashes through her hind quarters and she yelps, a sound that becomes a scream as her grasp of her form fails. She shifts back to herself, too magically and physically exhausted to sustain an alternative form any longer.
The orc above her laughs, she knows she is going to die because she has no way of defending herself now. It falls with a startled grunt to reveal Kili, his face savage and furious, who reaches for her. She goes to him willingly, barely able to stand on her injured leg, and she doesn't know if she is relieved or horrified when her mind fills with soaring silver that tastes of the wind.
"Hold on," Kili sweeps her in front of him and under his coat as large talons close around them.
A.N: Christmas is stressful, but my mummy fu is on point because I got through the family session today with enough time to get this one typed up. This is how I relax.