The gate into the Lonely Mountain was no less damaged than the city of Dale. What was once a beautifully intricate gate (that Bilbo had seen in one of the books his mother brought back from her Tookish adventures) now there was only a gaping hole. Rubble crumbled both in and out of the mountain. Large rocks of whites and greens and angles unnatural for a mountain littered the ground in all directions as though an explosion had rocked the mountain to pieces.

Bilbo was forced to crawl over whatever rubble was left of a bridge to the font gates, only standing when there was no other way for him to get across. Many a hobbit had lost their lives to a drowning and Bilbo refused to be one of them when he was so close. From there it was just a matter of choosing which direction to go.

There was no one at the gate to point Bilbo in any one direction (preferably one towards food since Bilbo couldn't really ask them where his soulmate was and he was quite hungry) and the great hall into the mountain had many small side paths that led off into the darkness. "Now then," he said to himself (he hadn't realized how much he liked company until he left the Shire and now without even Myrtle with him, the silence felt almost suffocating, "which way should I go. Surely the sensible thing would be to go straight. It does seem to be the main hall and surely it'll lead to…the throne room. Dwarves have kings right? Yes, if I remember correctly, they do. So strange, but that's not important at the moment. Anyway, forward would be the sensible choice, but then I would have to come back to all these side paths. Besides, I doubt my soulmate will be in the throne room. Perhaps I would more likely find them in the market. At least if they're anything like me. But where exactly would the market be? Surely not straight, but none of these other paths really look like the way either. Hmm. I think for now I'll go right and perhaps I'll find someone who can point me in the right direction. If not then I'll go left. Right. That's the plan then. Onward, my Dear Bilbo, there's no time to lose. Let's go find my soul mate."

But his quest was not nearly as easy as he had expected it to be. A full week had passed with him taking side path after side path and getting quite lost on more than one occasion. Sometimes he even accidentally spent a whole day exploring a cave only to find at the end of it that he had in fact already explored it a couple days prior. It finally go to the point that Bilbo found a white rock on the ground and starting marking the walls and entrance ways with it. He did feel bad about that, but it wasn't like he had found anyone to get angry at him anyway (which was rather starting to concern Bilbo just a little).

It was at the end of another week that Bilbo was starting to think that his search was fruitless. "Perhaps my soulmate isn't here after all. This place seems absolutely abandoned. Is it possible that they are past the mountain after all. Or perhaps I missed them coming here. Oh I wish I could tell where my soul mate was without the danger to point me in the right direction, but I just can't risk it. Maybe if I just go down this last hall, then I'll find them?" This Bilbo had been telling himself multiple times in the last few days (unwilling to believe that he had in fact missed his soul mate). "I'll just go down this last hall and then I'll go back to Myrtle. I think she might be running out of the food I left her anyway and she surely won't be happy with me for leaving her for so long when I promised I would be back."

With that decided, Bilbo headed down the hall and was utterly surprised as night started to fall (at least Bilbo thought it was that late, it was really hard to tell time with no sign of the sun) and he actually heard voices. At first he feared that it was his own mind playing tricks on him, but a moment's listen revealed that the voices were echoing from a crumbling cave to the right (a cave that he probably would have avoided due to fearing it to be structurally unsound at any other time). With a grin, Bilbo scrambled into the cave and through collapsed rock that were barely big enough in some places to allow a full grown dwarf to crawl through.

"We're out of food," someone was saying when Bilbo finally got close enough to make out the actual words.

"Is there nothing left of the food stores?" another dwarf asked.

Bilbo hesitated outside the door. Would they think him weird for entering without notice. It probably wasn't a good idea. They seemed to be having a pretty important conversation. But why in the world were they talking about being out of food? There were several pantries that Bilbo passed filled with plenty of food to fill his stomach these last couple of weeks (he always left a bit of coin behind when he took the food for whoever it belonged to. He wasn't a thief after all).

"We've emptied all the nearby stores. No one who has ventured farther has returned," said the first.

"That's not good. At this rate the children will starve."

At this thought Bilbo straightened. If there was one thing that a hobbit couldn't stand for, it was the starving of children. He marched right into the room, surveyed the amount of children (half of them were children), decided that he had plenty of food left in his bag to at least feed them, and swung his bag from his shoulder to dig out the remains of his food. "Alright little ones," he said, ignoring the adults who were staring at him as though he had grown another head (which Bilbo thought was rather rude, but he wasn't exactly unused to it with how he's been treated on his trip), "line up. I'll hand out some food to everyone." The children, seeing the bread and meat in Bilbo's hands, scrambled to their feet and lined up before him, pushing and shoving to be first. "No cutting and no shoving," Bilbo said. "It's very rude you know. Besides, you'll all get your fair share… And nothing more," he said when he noticed one of the children get back in line after already having received their food. He would much better have preferred to give them seconds, but he didn't have enough for it and he must be fair to everyone.

"What about amad?" One of the little girls asked.

"I'm afraid I don't have enough for them at the moment," Bilbo said, "but there's plenty of food round the mountain that I'm sure they can take from."

"You've been around the mountain?" asked the first dwarf Bilbo had heard. He was dark haired with a full beard and dark eyes. He held himself low to the ground despite his tall and lithe frame and he kept a hand grasped tightly around the hilt of a sword at his side.

"Well of course I have," Bilbo said, handing out the last of the food to the last child and standing to throw his bag back over his shoulder. "Have you not been around the mountain yourself? There's plenty of pantries all over the place with lots of food. Though, I do have to say that you the dwarves should probably take better care to make sure they are still good. I mean, there were a couple of pantries near the front gates that are filled with spoiled fruits. It didn't smell relatively good, if you want to know."

"Did you come through the front gate?" asked the second dwarf. This one was wider set with massive shoulders and hands to match. His blonde hair seemed to have recently been cut at the shoulder, and there was a bit of a burn to the cloth on his back.

Bilbo sucked in a breath when he saw this dwarf. He felt so familiar. Not in the way a soulmate would, of course (if only Bilbo could be that lucky), but in a way that one had for someone close to their Other. This person must be very closely related by blood to his soul mate (hobbits could often identify those closely related to their soul mates, but anyone farther away would be a harder sell or else everyone in the shire would feel like a relative). "Oh dear," Bilbo said to himself. He hadn't made a good first impression at all and this was a relative of his soulmate. What if they told his Other that he was no good just because he was so rude to start with. "I do apologize. I should have introduced myself. My name is Bilbo Baggins." (He did indeed completely forget about the question asked of him).

"I am Frerin," said the blonde, "and this is my brother, Vili."

Bilbo frowned at the dark haired dwarf who scowled right back at him. He didn't feel related to this dwarf at all. Perhaps they were brothers by another reason. Bilbo had sometimes heard that men of arms would call each other brothers if they battled together. Perhaps that was the same for these two.

"Enough of the niceties," Vili growled. "Answer the question."

"The question?" Bilbo asked.

"Did you enter this mountain through the front gate?" Frerin asked.

"Well I think so," Bilbo said. "Only it didn't particularly look like the front gate that's supposed to be there. It was more like a hole. What happened there? Do you plan on fixing it any time soon?"

A murmur rose up in the crowd of dwarves, distracting Bilbo for a moment so he didn't see the two dwarves giving each other wide-eyed looks.

"How did you find this place?" asked Frerin when Bilbo's attention returned to him.

"Well I should hope that I would come upon it eventually," Bilbo said. "Your mountain is kind of like a maze, but I have been here for two weeks already."

"Two week?!" Someone gasped.

"And you haven't seen the dragon?" Asked another.

Bilbo froze. "Dragon?" he asked. He had only heard of them in the great history books, but they didn't particularly seem like the type of people that Bilbo really wanted to meet. They were always far too greedy and willing to kill. Bilbo was a far better fan of those who preferred food and home over gold and killing. Not that he would hold that against his soul mate if they happened to be that way themselves (maybe). "What dragon?"

"You haven't seen the dragon?" asked Vili. "Is it possible that the wyrm has gone?"

"No," Frerin said. "A dragon will guard his treasure to his dying breath."

"Oh yes," Bilbo agreed eagerly (he was trying to impress the in-law after all). "I've read many stories where the only way to rid a treasure of a dragon would be to kill it. Although, there are some stories where the main character leads the dragon away from his treasure with some other sort of treasure of greater magnitude in order to steal from him. I like those kinds of stories best."

"So the dragon is still here," said Vili, "but how did you avoid it?"

"I don't know about a dragon being here," Bilbo said. "I haven't seen one in the entirety of my life, so I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Did you not pass the treasure room on your way here?" Frerin asked.

"The treasure room?" Bilbo asked, thinking about it in his head. "I'm not too sure. What does it look like?"

"You would know it if you saw it," Vili said with a gruff, but Frerin grinned.

"This is good!" he said. "Do you think that you could take us back to the front gate with you."

"Brother!" Vili growled. "How do we know we can trust this creature. There is no knowing where he might lead us to. Perhaps he is in league with the dragon."

"I could take you back the way I came," Bilbo said, cutting in (it wasn't nice for Vili to assume he had dastardly plans and he was determined to set him to rights). "But the cave I came through was collapsed in some places. Surely you know of another way that we could get to the front gate?"

"Your way is the only way," Frerin said. "Will you take us there?"

"Of course," Bilbo grinned. "On one condition."

"What's that?" Vili growled.

"We have to stop for food on the way. I'm rather hungry myself and I don't particularly want to go without today."