Author's Note:

I've been so excited for badass Kili-loving Nadi to meet the even more badass Kili-loving Tauriel, y'all don't even know...

X

The entrance to the dark forest loomed before them. All was still, and quiet. Not a leaf rustled, nor did a branch creak, and this unsettled Nadi. She squeezed the reins in her hands and stared with some trepidation into the darkness that roiled beyond. Fetidness and death oozed from the space. She could smell it.

"Is there no other way?" She asked Gandalf when he returned. His face was drawn and haggard, as if he were plagued by a disquieting thought. Unbeknownst to her, he had heard the voice of Galadriel, warning him against a Necromancer whose strength was quickly growing. Though he had planned to accompany the Dwarves on their journey, the presence of evil was much more pressing. He would go to the tombs within the mountains and leave the Company on their own to venture into the woods.

He brushed past Nadi and demanded to be given a horse.

"Gandalf!" She turned in her saddle and quickly grabbed the edge of his sleeve before he could pass. She wasn't sure what she wanted to say. A weight hung about her shoulders, and at that moment desperation led her to believe that he was the only one that she could tell. Her fear of him had evaporated when he had fixed her leg. Now, she had truly begun to see him as the powerful and non-malevolent wizard that he was.

"What is it, Nadi?"

Her grip on his robes tightened and then she let go. She could feel Thorin's eyes on her back as the other Dwarves prepared to leave their ponies behind. She bit her bottom lip, knowing that speaking to Gandalf before addressing her fear to her king would be a slight betrayal on her part as a Dwarve.

"Something's wrong," she finally said in a low voice. "I can feel it."

"Evil abounds in this world. You know that."

"No," she shook her head. "I mean, I can feel it inside. Like it's growing." It wasn't exactly what she had wanted to say. Her mind was filled with thoughts of Ana, and this in turn set an anxious mood upon her. For the first time, she had begun to feel as if chaos lay on the horizon. No longer did the desire to reclaim their gold fill her heart. Instead, she was moved by a desire to simply stay alive.

Gandalf peered at her curiously and then did something strange: he put his hand on her forehead and brushed her hair away. He hummed low in his throat as his eyes swept back and forth across the upper end of her face. He seemed curious. And concerned.

"Are you feeling ill?"

Her eyebrows jumped and she leaned away from him. Of course, she should have known. Her attempts to convey her innermost thoughts had fallen upon deaf ears. And now the old man thought that she was talking crazy!

"Nevermind! Forget I said anything!" She hopped off of her pony and stormed away from him. "Ol' meddlesome busybody tree-trunk of a wizard," she added in Khuzdul.

He bid her take care of herself but she simply waved her hand over her shoulder at him. She stood with her back turned to him and her arms crossed, but still, she strained her ears to catch bits and pieces of his conversation with Bilbo. It sounded as if he was acknowledging the Hobbit's newfound courage. This caused a smile to twitch upon her lips and she turned to offer her own opinion. But as she did, she caught the sight of Gandalf leaning next to Thorin. The two men had their eyes on her, not in the friendliest of ways, she thought. Gandalf quickly turned, as did Thorin, so as not to seem as if they were conversing about her.

But Nadi had caught the tail end of the words upon Gandalf's lips.

"Keep your eye on her," was all that he had said.

X

The Company began its trek into the dark forest. The smell of mildew and rot grew sharper as they waded deeper and deeper within. Time seemed to stretch and then snap back into place as she walked. Her feet were doing an odd sort of dance where they moved forward, backward, and then forward again. Eventually, she stopped looking at them altogether. She wasn't walking, she was lurching: every step jolting her body as if she were drunk. Her stomach protested at the smells surrounding her and she stopped to lean against a tree.

"Agh, the stench," someone moaned as she closed her eyes and tried her best not to vomit.

"S'not normal. S'not mulch. S'meat rotting somewhere. A whole lot of it." That statement should have been enough to warn her of the presence of large, carnivorous beasts in the forest. But confusion was beginning to crowd the edges of her mind. Though her mouth moved, she didn't hear the sound of her voice until a few seconds later. Had she even spoken? Breath and moaning merged into one until she was no longer sure what was tumbling out of her mouth.

"Air...I need air," Bofur moaned. She would have told him to shut up, that they all needed air, but her eyes had fallen closed of their own accord and she felt as if she were falling into a swirling blackness.

"My head," Oin said, "It's spinning. What's happening?"

"Keep moving," came Thorin's gruff response.

They continued to press forward, their pace growing sluggish and disjointed. The Dwarve in front of her came to a sudden stop and she stumbled into his back. Thorin let a hand down on her shoulder and pushed her away, rough enough to send her stumbling into Kili.

"Nori. Why have you stopped?" He demanded. Nori pointed a shaking finger towards the distance and muttered, "the path...it's disappeared."

This was true. The ground before them had opened up into a wide abyss. Beyond, stood a dense tangle of trees crowding the edge of a slope that descended into darkness. Thorin whirled around, his eyes darting around the silent forest. His words echoed with a heavy distortion as he demanded that they find the path, quickly.

Luck was not on their side as they crawled about in search of the path. Feet stumbled and hands groped but it had begun to seem as if they were hopelessly, and undoubtedly, lost.

"Is there no end to this accursed forest?" Thorin howled.

"We are lost!"

"No," Balin said with a resolved shake of the head. "We are not lost. We keep heading East."

"But which way is East?" Dwalin spat back. "We've lost the sun!"

"The sun," Bilbo muttered to himself. "We have to find the sun!"

Nadi walked up to a tree trunk and began to pet it with a dizzy smile on her face. She barely noticed as the Hobbit grabbed hold of the branch above her and began to clamber up towards the treeline.

"Ma," she said. The image of the trunk gave a ripple then revealed itself to be the image of her mother, hunched low in the shadows. "Mighty unkind of you to send me back into this insane world. We could have lived in the forest. You and me, forever. No destruction. No desolation. Oh!" The image rippled again. Long, straight hair began to inch its way out her mother's scalp. Her face grew pale as parchment with ink dripping down the sides as her shoulders straightened. It was Ana, hunched over and glaring. "And you!" Nadi said. "Well, welcome back, aye? Never gave you your proper dues, I guess. You're one wild fighter but I got the best of ya, I did. What say you we try again - proper this time?"

"I suppose a late apology is still an apology, nonetheless," a distinctly male voice said back. She shook her head - the image cleared - and she glared at the Dwarve sitting in front of her.

"Kili-I-wasn't-talking-to-you," she hissed angrily. She had mistaken his raven black hair for Ana's. He sighed and let his head fall back against the boulder behind him.

"What a shame," he said, "I was beginning to like you, starlight."

She was about to curse him when she noticed something odd happening. His hair was beginning to lift at the sides. Tendrils of black were extending upwards from his mane, reaching higher and growing thicker by the second. She gasped and stumbled backward.

"Kili, your hair!" She squeaked and drew her ax. "It looks like the legs of a spider! Wait, no-" a mighty crackling of trees erupted from behind him as simultaneously a large and grotesque body lifted itself upon spindly legs. "It is a spider!" She cried. But her words were lost. A thick web of netting struck her in the back and she was thrown forward. The fetid stench filled her nose again as she watched, in helpless agony, as the underbelly of a giant spider descended towards her.

X

Nadi didn't know how long she lay suspended in the spider's thick web. It could have days or it could have been minutes. Every breath that she took seemed to only tighten the translucent webs crisscrossing her chest until all she could do was take shallow breaths that barely filled her lungs. She could hear the spiders - those ugly, vicious creatures - clambering around her. The movement of their limbs emitted a sound like branches, or bones breaking and this would have unsettled her had she not grown so weak.

Something big and hairy scuttled across her bound body and she flinched. She couldn't move her legs to kick it so instead, she gave her body a violent jerk. The spider hissed and moved away to scrutinize another from the Company.

Her thoughts dissolved into nil. A thick and heady slumber threatened to engulf her at any minute. She roused herself from fits of sleep with mighty shudders and gasps. But why not sleep? She was so tired, it must have been the damned forest…

There was a sudden clamor of creaking branches and monstrous legs churning. It seemed as if the spiders were moving away in hordes. She strained her ears, trying to gauge their distance when suddenly she felt a soft pressure on her back. Her cocoon began to shake violently as the pressure grew, traveling along her back in sporadic jerks. This was it! One of the spiders must have remained to enjoy a little feast of its own, away from the others. She tried to scream, but strands of webbing caught in her mouth and wedged themselves in her throat.

Then suddenly she fell. A thick branch slammed into her lower back, knocking the wind out of her and breaking her fall. She hurriedly squirmed around and stood up. The cocoon swayed above her, the side of it torn and fluttering like a ghostly veil in the moonlight.

Someone had cut her out.

Two eyes glittered from the branch above the cocoon. The woman stood at a crouch, one hand upon the tree trunk and the other brandishing a large dagger by her hip. Her face was blank as the first day that Nadi had laid eyes upon her, except for a slight shift in her eyebrow when their eyes met.

A shadow passed above them. The two women looked up, just as a giant spider dashed through the treeline. A second one followed close behind, its hairy legs kicking up tufts of dead leaves as it churned across the ground. The treetop spider jumped and for a brief moment, Ana's head was framed between the two fangs jutting from its venom-strung maw. Nadi threw up her hands in desperation, already foreseeing the gruesome death of the strange woman, but Ana was faster. She turned with a cry and thrust her dagger into the mouth of the spider. The beast's body began to quiver, and it screamed so loud that Nadi ducked and covered her ears. But Ana continued to stab it, the muscles in her arms twitching as she drew her hand back and stabbed it again and again. Inky black blood sprayed from its mouth and covered Nadi's face and hair. The mighty legs of the spider contracted around its body. Ana was quick to withdraw her dagger before it tumbled, lifeless and twitching to the ground.

"Here!" She heard a familiar voice say. She threw herself along the edge of the branch and searched desperately for Bilbo. But he was nowhere to be seen. Unbeknownst to her, he was wearing the ring that granted him the power of invisibility.

"Bilbo!" She called out. There was a thump on the branch beside her and she looked up to find that Ana had jumped down. The woman surveyed the spider on the ground with a deep frown before turning to Nadi.

"Will you go?" She said haltingly. "To save your friend?"

Nadi said nothing to this as she slung her pack along her shoulders and prepared to descend the tree trunk. The answer was obvious. Ana grabbed her shoulders and spun her around to face her. She thrust the flat side of the dagger against Nadi's chest. It still bore traces of the spider's blood.

"Act wisely," she urged the Dwarve. "Do not get yourself killed."

"The former will not guarantee the latter," Nadi said as she gripped the thorny edges of a vine. "Sometimes madness is needed in a mad world."

"Even so! Be cautious in waging your life. I need you alive, woodland warrior!"

But Nadi heard none of this. If she had, she would have been inclined to question the strange statement. She swung herself off of the vine and landed in front of the grounded spider. It thrust its body backward as if struck by a blow and she made quick work of its thrashing legs.

"Bilbo! Bilbo! Where are you?" She called as the spider withered and died.

"I'm up here! Here!" Came his faraway voice. She looked up and saw that the rest of the Company had been freed from their cocoons. One by one they dropped from the trees and landed beside her.

"Nadi!" Ori said and pulled her into a suffocating embrace.

"How did you free yourself?" She asked. He glanced at her as if she were crazy and said, "I didn't. I thought it was you-"

"Where's Bilbo?" Bofur asked urgently. They looked around, but despite hearing the voice of Bilbo above them, they could not see him.

The hoards of spiders returned. They galloped towards them with flashing eyes and snapping jaws. There was no time to find their Burglar. With warrior cries and weapons flashing, the Dwarves descended upon the army of spiders with a fresh vengeance. They managed to push them back and cut a course through the bloody ground. Bilbo appeared behind them, clutching something to his chest as he ran.

"Come on! Keep up!" Dwalin called and he ran faster.

"Clear!" Thorin called back.

For a moment, it seemed as if they had escaped the clutches of the spiders. Then suddenly one landed before them, its hairy forelimbs quivering in the air. A fresh wave of spiders appeared beyond the trees, casting silvery-blue webs behind them as they flew through the trees. The Company stopped, at a loss, as they were quickly surrounded by the chittering beasts.

"This is it," Nadi growled. " 'twas nice knowing you all!"

But then the shape of a man materialized between the trees. His pale golden hair flew behind him as he slid along the branches of the trees. Deftly, he unleashed a barrage of arrows at the spider standing before them and then made quick work of the others. Several men joined him and rained their fury upon the spiders.

They were Elves, Wood Elves to be exact.

Nadi watched with bated breath as they killed the beasts one-by-one. Back pressed against Dwalin, she stood with her ax drawn. But there was nothing left for them to do. The spiders were dead, or so she thought.

She turned and let out a scream. A swarm of smaller spiders had cornered Kili. She made a move to rush towards him, but Dwalin stuck his hand out and pushed her back.

"Look," he said urgently.

A female Elf with hair as red as embers slid through the trees towards the back. Swift and graceful as a cutting breeze, she fired upon the spiders with her arrows. Her face was set in concentration as she wielded her weapon, though Nadi could see the fire burning bright in her eyes.

"Throw me a dagger, quick!" Kili demanded of her as a spider approached. The Elf turned and stared him down coolly, the faintest of smiles lining her coral lips.

"If you think I'm giving you a weapon, Dwarf, you are mistaken."

She thrust her dagger in the belly of the spider and it fell away, hissing. The female Elf ran a hand through her hair and sighed in satisfaction. Kili's eyes traced her lithe figure as she moved towards them. The sight of it set an odd feeling in Nadi's stomach. She could see her as if through Kili's eyes: there was beauty in the woman's sharp cheeks and bright eyes, as well as strength.

"I could fry an egg on your cheekbones," Nadi hissed as the Elf passed her by. She stopped and stared down at Nadi curiously.

"It would spoil in your hands before you reached your mark, Dwarf," she said. "Assuming, that is, that you can even reach my face. Search them!"

The Elves began to poke and prod at the Dwarves. Nadi hissed and cursed as they unveiled hidden weapons from the front of the cloak and the back of her trousers. So thorough were they that they even found the secret knives braided deep in her hair.

The head Elf with fair hair unsheathed Thorin's sword and glanced along its length.

"Where did you get this?" He asked. He levered the tip of it against Thorin's chest. Alarmed, Nadi wrestled against the Elves holding her down. Thorin cast her a look - be still, it said - and she settled, albeit with a grudge.

"It was given to me," he said. The Elf snickered.

"Not just a thief, but a liar as well." The Elf gave a command in his tongue. The others began to move away, the Dwarves forced into a single file between them. Bofur looked around and then set his alarmed eyes on Nadi.

"Where's Bilbo?" He mouthed. She looked around but, once again, the Hobbit was nowhere in sight.